itwriwitwnmw 


LIBRARY 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA, 


Cla&s 


MIRACLES 


SUPERNATURAL  RELIGION 


MIRACLES 


AND 


SUPERNATURAL  RELIGION 


BY 


JAMES  MORRIS  WHITON,  PH.D.  (YALE) 
It 


Portentum  non  fit  contra  naturam,  sed 
contra  quam  est  nota  natura 

—  AUGUSTINE 


%\BRA^> 
or  THE 

(    UNIVERSITY  ) 

OF 


gcrfe 
THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON:  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTD. 
1903 

All  rights  reserved 


SENERAL 


COPYRIGHT,  1903, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up,  electrotyped,  and  published  May,  1903. 


Nortoooti  - 

J.  S.  Cashing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


M.  B.  W. 


120806 


PREFATORY    NOTE 

WHILE  the  present  subject  of  discussion 
tempts  to  many  an  excursion  into  particu- 
lars, its  treatment  is  restricted  to  general 
outlines,  with  an  aim  simply  to  clarify 
current  ideas  of  miracle  and  the  super- 
natural, so  as  to  find  firm  holding  ground 
for  tenable  positions  in  the  present  "  drift 
period  "  of  theology.  The  chief  exception 
made  to  this  general  treatment  is  the  dis- 
cussion given  to  a  class  of  miracles  re- 
garded with  as  much  incredulity  as  any, 
yet  as  capable  as  any  of  being  accredited 
as  probably  historical  events — the  raisings 
of  the  "dead."  The  insistence  of  some 
writers  on  the  virgin  birth  and  corporeal 
resurrection  of  Jesus  as  essential  to  Chris- 
tianity has  required  brief  discussion  of 
7 


8  Prefatory  Note 

these  also,  mainly  with  reference  to  the 
reasonableness  of  that  demand.  As  to  the 
latter  miracle,  it  must  be  observed  that  in 
the  Biblical  narratives  taken  as  a  whole, 
whichever  of  their  discordant  features  one 
be  disposed  to  emphasize,  the  psychical 
element  clearly  preponderates  over  the 
physical  and  material. 

J.  M.  W. 

NEW  YORK, 
April  ii,  1903. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTORY 13 

THE  ARGUMENT 

I 

The  gradual  narrowing  of  the  miraculous  element 
in  the  Bible  by  recent  discovery  and  discussion. 
—  The  alarm  thereby  excited  in  the  Church. — 
The  fallacy  which  generates  the  fear.  —  The 
atheistic  conception  of  nature  which  generates 
the  fallacy.  —  The  present  outgrowing  of  this 
conception 25 

II 

The  present  net  results  of  the  discussion  of  the 
miraculous  element  in  the  Bible.  —  Evaporation 
of  the  former  evidential  value  of  miracles. — 
Further  insistence  on  this  value  a  logical  blun- 
der.— The  transfer  of  miracles  from  the  artillery 
to  the  baggage  of  the  Church.  —  Probability  of 
a  further  reduction  of  the  list  of  miracles. — 
Also  of  a  further  transfer  of  events  reputed 
miraculous  to  the  domain  of  history  .  .  .  37 

III 

Arbitrary  criticism  of  the  Biblical  narratives  of  the 
raising  of  the  "  dead."  —  Facts  which  it  ignores. 
9 


10  Contents 

PAGE 

—  The  subject  related  to  the   phenomena  of 
trance,  and  records  of  premature  burial.  —  The 
resuscitation  in  Elisha's  tomb  probably  histori- 
cal. —  Jesus'   raising   of  the   ruler's  daughter 
plainly  such  a  case.  —  His  raising  of  the  widow's 
son  probably  such.  —  The  hypothesis  that  his 
raising  of  Lazarus  may  also  have  been  such 
critically  examined.  —  The  record  allows  this 
supposition.  —  Further  considerations  favoring 
it:    I.  The  supposition  threatens  no  real  in- 
terest of  Christianity.  —  2.   Enhances  the  char- 
acter of  the  act  as  a  work  of  mercy.  —  3.   Is 
independent  of  the  belief  of  the  witnesses  of 
the  act.  —  4.   Is   coherent  with   the   general 
conception  of  the  healing  works  of  Jesus  as 
wrought  by  a  peculiar  psychical  power.  —  Other 
cases.  —  The  resurrection  of  Jesus  an  event  in 
a  wholly  different  order  of  things.  —  The  prac- 
tical result  of  regarding  these  resuscitations  as 

in  the  order  of  nature        .         .         .         .         •    47 

IV 

A  clearer  conception  of  miracle  approached. — 
Works  of  Jesus  once  reputed  miraculous  not  so 
reputed  now,  since   not  now  transcending  as 
once  the  existing  range  of  knowledge  and  power. 

—  This  transfer  of  the  miraculous  to  the  natural 
likely  to   continue.  —  No   hard  and   fast  line 
between  the  miraculous  and  the  non-miraculous. 

—  Miracle  a  provisional  word,  its  application 
narrowing  in  the  enlarging  mastery  of  the  secrets 

of  Nature  and  of  life 75 


Contents  11 

v 

PAGE 

Biblical  miracles  the  effluence  of  extraordinary 
lives.  —  Life  the  world's  magician  and  miracle- 
worker;  its  miracles  now  termed  prodigies. — 
Miracle  the  natural  product  of  an  extraordinary 
endowment  of  life.  —  Life  the  ultimate  reality. 

—  What  any  man  can  achieve  is  conditioned 
by  the  psychical  quality  of  his  life.  —  Nothing 
more  natural,  more  supernatural,  than  life. — 
The  derived  life  of  the  world  filial  to  the  self- 
existent  life  of  God;  "begotten,  not  made."  — 
Miracle  as  the  product  of  life,  the  work  of  God    85 

VI 

The  question,  old  and  new,  now  confronting  theo- 
logians.—  Their  recent  retreat  upon  the  mini- 
mum of  miracle.  —  The  present  conflict  of  opin- 
ion in  the  Church.  —  Its  turning-point  reached 
in  the  antipodal  turn-about  in  the  treatment  of 
miracles  from  the  old  to  the  new  apologetics. 

—  Revision  of  the  traditional  idea  of  the  super- 
natural required  for  theological  readjustment    .    95 

VII 

Account  to  be  made  of  the  law  of  atrophy  through 
disuse.  —  The  virgin  birth  and  the  corporeal 
resurrection  of  Jesus,  the  two  miracles  still  in- 
sisted on  as  the  irreducible  minimum,  affected 
by  this  law.  —  The  vital  truths  of  the  incarna- 
tion and  immortality  independent  of  these  mira- 
cles. —  These  truths  now  placed  on  higher 
ground  in  a  truer  conception  of  the  super- 


12  Contents 

PAGE 

natural.  —  The  true  supernatural  is  the  spiritual, 
not  the  miraculous.  —  Scepticism  bred  from  the 
contrary  view.  —  The  miracle-narratives,  while 
less  evidential  for  religion,  not  unimportant  for 
history.  —  Psychical  research  a  needed  auxiliary 
for  the  scientific  critic  of  these  .  .  .  .107 

VIII 

The  cardinal  point  in  the  present  discussion  the 
reality  not  of  miracles,  but  of  the  supernatural. 
—  Fallacy  of  pointing  to  physical  events  as 
essential  characteristics  of  supernatural  Revela- 
tion.— The  character  of  a  revelation  determined 
not  by  its  circumstances,  but  by  its  contents.  — 
Moral  nature  supernatural  to  physical.  — Nature 
a  hierarchy  of  natures.  —  Supernatural  Religion 
historically  attested  by  the  moral  development 
it  generates.  —  Transfer  of  its  distinctive  note 
from  moral  ideals  to  physical  marvels  a  costly 
error.  —  Jesus'  miracles  a  revelation,  of  a  type 
common  with  others  before  and  after.  —  The 
unique  Revelation  of  Jesus  was  in  the  higher 
realm  of  divine  ideas  and  ideals.  — These,  while 
unrealized  in  human  life,  still  exhibit  the  fact  of 
a  supernatural  Revelation. — The  distinction  of 
natural  and  supernatural  belongs  to  the  period 
of  moral  progress  up  to  the  spiritual  maturity 
of  man  in  the  image  of  God.  —  The  divine  pos- 
sibilities of  humanity,  imaged  in  Jesus,  revealed 
as  our  inheritance  and  our  prize  .  .  .131 


INTRODUCTORY 

jN  a  historical  retrospect  greater 
and  more  revolutionary  changes 
are  seen  to  have  occurred  dur- 
ing the  nineteenth  century  than  in  any 
century  preceding.  In  these  changes  no 
department  of  thought  and  activity  has 
failed  to  share,  and  theological  thought 
has  been  quite  as  much  affected  as  scien- 
tific or  ethical.  Especially  remarkable  is 
the  changed  front  of  Christian  theologians 
toward  miracles,  their  distinctly  lowered 
estimate  of  the  significance  of  miracle, 
their  antipodal  reverse  of  the  long  estab- 
lished treatment  of  miracles.  Referring 
to  this  a  British  evangelical  writer1  ob- 

1  Professor  W.  T.  Adeney  in  the  Hibbert  Jour- 
nal, January,  1903,  p.  302. 

'3 


14  Introductory 

serves  that  "the  intelligent  believer  of 
our  own  day,  .  .  .  instead  of  accepting 
Christianity  on  the  ground  of  the  mira- 
cles, accepts  it  in  spite  of  the  miracles. 
Whether  he  admits  these  miracles,  or 
rejects  them,  his  attitude  toward  them 
is  toward  difficulties,  not  helps.'* 

By  this  diametrical  change  of  Christian 
thought  a  great  amount  of  scepticism  has 
already  been  antiquated.  A  once  famous 
anti-Christian  book,  Sicpernatural  Reli- 
gion, regarded  as  formidable  thirty  years 
ago,  is  now  as  much  out  of  date  for  rele- 
vancy to  present  theological  conditions  as 
is  the  old  smooth-bore  cannon  for  naval 
warfare.  That  many,  indeed,  are  still 
unaware  of  the  change  that  has  been 
experienced  by  the  leaders  of  Christian 
thought,  no  one  acquainted  with  current 
discussions  will  deny;  the  fact  is  indu- 
bitablej  It  is  reviewed  in  the  following 
pages  with  the  constructive  purpose  of  re- 


Introductory  1 5 

deeming  the  idea  of  supernatural  Religion 
from  pernicious  perversion,  and  of  exhibit- 
ing it  in  its  true  spiritual  significance.  The 
once  highly  reputed  calculations  made  to 
show  how  the  earth's  diurnal  revolution 
could  be  imperceptibly  stopped  for  Joshua's 
convenience,  and  the  contention  that  the 
Mediterranean  produced  fish  with  gullets 
capable  of  giving  passage  to  Jonah,  are 
now  as  dead  as  the  chemical  controversy 
about  phlogiston.  Ye£  some  sceptical 
controversialists  are  still  so  far  from  cul- 
tivating the  acquaintance  with  recent 
thought  which  they  recommend  to  Chris- 
tian theologians,  as  to  persist  in  affirma- 
tions of  amazing  ignorance,  e.g.  "  It  is  ad- 
mitted that  miracles  alone  can  attest  the 
reality  of  divine  revelation."1  Sponsors 
for  this  statement  must  now  be  sought 
among  unlearned  Christians,  or  among  a 

1  See  the  recent  new  edition  of  Supernatural 
Religion,  "  carefully  revised." 


16  Introductory 

few  scholars  who  survive  as  cultivators 
of  the  old-fashioned  argument  from  the 
"evidences/*  Even  among  these  latter 
the  tendency  to  minimize  miracle  is  un- 
deniably apparent  in  a  reduction  of  the 
list  classified  as  such,  and  still  more  in 
the  brevity  of  the  list  insisted  on  for  the 
attestation  of  Christianity. 

A  transitional  state  of  mind  is  clearly 
evidenced  by  the  present  division  and 
perplexity  of  Christian  thought  concern- 
ing the  Christian  miracles.  Many  seem 
to  regard  further  discussion  as  profitless, 
and  are  ready  to  shelve  the  subject.  But 
this  attitude  of  weariness  is  also  transi- 
tional. There  must  be  some  thorough- 
fare to  firm  ground  and  clear  vision.  It 
must  be  found  in  agreement,  first  of  all, 
on  the  real  meaning  of  a  term  so  vari- 
ously and  vaguely  used  as  miracle.  In 
the  present  imperfect  state  of  knowledge 
it  may  be  impossible  to  enucleate  miracle, 


Introductory  17 

however  defined,  of  all  mystery.  But 
even  so  will  much  be  gained  for  clear 
thinking,  if  miracle  can  be  reasonably 
related  to  the  greater  mystery  which  all 
accept,  though  none  understand,  —  the 
mystery  of  life.  This  view  of  the  dy- 
namic relation  of  life  to  miracle1  is  here 
suggested  for  what  it  may  prove  to  be 
worth. 

The  great  and  general  change  that 
transfigured  theology  during  the  nine- 
teenth century  was  characteristically 
ethical.  This,  indeed,  is  the  distinctive 
feature  of  the  so-called  new  theology,  in 
contrast  with  that  which  the  Protestant 
Reformers  inherited  from  St.  Augustine. 
God  and  Man,  Faith,  Salvation  and  In- 

1  For  an  earlier  statement  of  this  by  the  present 
writer,  see  a  discourse  on  "  Miracle  and  Life," 
in  New  Points  to  Old  Texts.  London  :  James 
Clarke  &  Co.,  1889.  New  York:  Thomas 
Whittaker. 
c 


18  Introductory 

spiration,  Redemption  and  Atonement, 
Judgment  and  Retribution,  —  all  these 
themes  are  now  presented  in  orthodox 
pulpits  far  more  conformably  to  ethical 
principles,  though  in  degrees  varying 
with  educated  intelligence,  than  was  cus- 
tomary in  the  sermons  of  half  a  cen- 
tury ago.  "One  great  source  and  spring 
of  theological  progress,"  says  Professor 
Bowne,  in  his  recent  work  on  Theism, 
"has  been  the  need  of  finding  a  con- 
ception of  God  which  the  moral  nature 
could  accept.  The  necessity  of  moraliz- 
ing theology  has  produced  vast  changes 
in  that  field;  and  the  end  is  not  yet." 

The  ethical  character  of  the  theo- 
logical change  will  perhaps  be  most 
obvious  in  the  field  of  Biblical  study, 
to  which  the  present  subject  belongs. 
The  traditional  solution  of  such  moral 
difficulties  in  the  Old  Testament  as 
commands,  ostensibly  divine,  to  mas- 


Introductory  19 

sacre  idolaters  has  been  quite  discarded. 
It  is  no  longer  the  mode  to  say  that 
deeds  seemingly  atrocious  were  not  atro- 
cious, because  God  commanded  them. 
Writers  of  orthodox  repute  now  say  that 
the  Thus  saith  the  Lord,  with  which 
Samuel  prefaced  his  order  to  extermi- 
nate the  Amalekites,  must  be  under- 
stood subjectively,  as  an  expression  of 
the  prophet's  belief,  not  objectively,  as 
a  divine  command  communicated  to  him. 
This  great  change  is  a  quite  recent 
change.  If  a  personal  reference  may  be 
indulged,  it  is  not  twenty  years  since  the 
present  writer's  published  protest  against 
"The  Anti-Christian  Use  of  the  Bible  in 
the  Sunday  School/' 1  the  exhibition  to 
children  of  some  vestiges  of  heathen 
superstition  embedded  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment narratives  as  true  illustrations  of 

1  The  New  Englander,  September,  1884. 


20  Introductory 

God's  ways  toward  men,  drew  forth  from 
a  religious  journal  a  bitter  editorial  on 
"The  Old  Testament  and  its  New  Ene- 
mies/' But  a  great  light  has  since 
dawned  in  that  quarter.  It  is  no  longer 
deemed  subversive  of  faith  in  a  divine 
Revelation  to  hold  that  the  prophet 
Gad  was  not  infallible  in  regarding  the 
plague  which  scourged  Jerusalem  as  sent 
to  punish  David's  pride  in  his  census  of 
the  nation. 

A  significant  fact  is  presented  in  the 
comparison  of  these  two  aspects  of  the 
theological  change  that  has  come  to  pass, 
—  the  growing  importance  of  the  ethical, 
and  the  dwindling  importance  of  the 
miraculous  in  the  religious  thought  of 
to-day.  This  may  reassure  those  who 
fear  whereto  such  change  may  grow. 
The  inner  significance  of  such  a  change 
is  most  auspicious.  It  portends  the  dis- 
placement of  a  false  by  the  true  concep- 


Introductory  21 

tion  of  supernatural  Religion,  and  the 
removal  thereby  of  a  serious  antagonism 
between  Science  and  Christian  Theology, 
as  well  as  of  a  serious  hindrance  of  many 
thoughtful  minds  from  an  intelligent  em- 
brace of  Christianity. 


MIRACLES  AND  SUPERNATURAL 
RELIGION 


SYNOPSIS.  —  The  gradual  narrowing  of  the  mirac- 
ulous element  in  the  Bible  by  recent  discovery  and 
discussion.  —  The  alarm  thereby  excited  in  the 
Church. — The  fallacy  which  generates  the  fear. — 
The  atheistic  conception  of  nature  which  gene- 
rates the  fallacy.  —  The  present  outgrowing  of  this 
conception. 

|T  is  barely  forty  years  since  that 
beloved  and  fearless  Christian 
scholar,  Dean  Stanley,  spoke 
thus  of  the  miracles  recorded  of  the 
prophet  Elisha:  "His  works  stand  alone 
in  the  Bible  in  their  likeness  to  the  acts 
of  mediaeval  saints.  There  alone  in  the 
Sacred  History  the  gulf  between  Biblical 
and  Ecclesiastical  miracles  almost  disap- 
pears." l  It  required  sdme  courage  to  say 

1  Lectures  on  the  History  of  the  Jewish 
Church,  Vol.  II,  p.  362,  American  edition. 

25 


26     Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

as  much  as  this  then,  while  the  storm 
of  persecution  was  raging  against  Bishop 
Colenso  for  his  critical  work  on  the  Pen- 
tateuch. The  evangelical  clergymen  in 
England  and  the  United  States  then  pre- 
pared to  confess  as  much  as  this,  with  all 
that  it  obviously  implies,  could  have  been 
seated  in  a  small  room.  But  time  has 
moved  on,  and  the  Church,  at  least  the 
scholars  of  the  Church,  have  moved  with  it. 
No  scholar  of  more  than  narrowly  local 
repute  now  hesitates  to  acknowledge  the 
presence  of  a  legendary  element  both  in 
the  Old  Testament  and  in  the  New.  While 
the  extent  of  it  is  still  undetermined,  many 
specimens  of  it  are  recognized.  It  is  agreed 
that  the  early  narratives  in  Genesis  are  of 
this  character,  and  that  it  is  marked  in 
such  stories  as  those  of  Samson,  Elijah, 
and  Elisha.  Even  the  conservative  re- 
visers of  the  Authorized  Version  have 
eliminated  from  the  Fourth  Gospel  the 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion    27 

story  of  the  angel  at  the  pool  of  Bethesda, 
and  in  their  marginal  notes  on  the  Third 
Gospel  have  admitted  a  doubt  concerning 
the  historicity  of  the  angel  and  the  bloody 
sweat  in  Gethsemane. 

Furthermore,  some  events,  recognized  as 
historical,  have  been  divested  of  the  mirac- 
ulous character  once  attributed  to  them, 
—  the  crossing  of  the  Red  Sea,  for  in- 
stance, by  the  Hebrew  host.  A  landslip 
in  the  thirteenth  century  A.D.  has  been 
noted  as  giving  historical  character  to  the 
story  of  the  Hebrew  host  under  Joshua's 
command  crossing  the  Jordan  "on  dry 
ground/1  but  in  a  perfectly  natural  way. 
Other  classes  of  phenomena  once  regarded 
as  miraculous  have  been  transferred  to  the 
domain  of  natural  processes  by  the  inves- 
tigations and  discoveries  that  have  been 
made  in  the  field  of  psychical  research. 
The  forewarning  which  God  is  said  to  have 
given  the  prophet  Ahijah  of  the  visit  that 


28     Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

the  queen  was  about  to  pay  him  in  dis- 
guise *  is  now  recognized  as  one  of  many 
cases  of  the  mysterious  natural  function 
that  we  label  as  "  telepathy."  The  trans- 
formations of  unruly,  vicious,  and  mentally 
disordered  characters  by  hypnotic  influence 
that  have  been  effected  at  the  Saltpetriere 
in  Paris,  and  elsewhere,  by  physicians  ex- 
pert in  psychical  therapeutics  are  closely 
analogous  to  the  cures  wrought  by  Jesus 
on  some  victims  of  "  demoniac  possession.2 

1  i  Kings  xiv.  1-7. 

2  It  is  not  intended  to  intimate  that  there  is  no 
such   darker  reality  as   a  "  possession "  that  is 
"demoniac"  indeed.    It  cannot  be  reasonably 
pronounced  superstitious  to  judge  that  there  is 
some  probability  for  that  view.  At  any  rate,  it  is 
certain  that  the  problem  is  not  to  be  settled  by 
dogmatic  pronouncement.  It  is  certain,  also,  that 
the  burden  of  proof  rests  on  those  who  contend 
that  there  can  be  no  such  thing.      On  the  other 
hand,   it   may  be  conceded  that  the  cases  re- 
corded in  the  New  Testament  do  not  seem  to 
be  of  an  essentially  devilish  kind.     On  the  gen- 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion    29 

The  cases  of  apparition,1  also,  which  have 
been  investigated  and  verified  by  the  Soci- 
ety for  Psychical  Research  have  laid  a  solid 
basis  of  fact  for  the  Biblical  stories  of  an- 
gels, as  at  least,  a  class  of  phenomena  to 
be  regarded  as  by  no  means  altogether 
legendary,  but  having  their  place  among 
natural  though  mysterious  occurrences. 

But  this  progressive  paring  down  of  the 
miraculous  element  in  the  Bible  has  caused 
outcries  of  unfeigned  alarm.  Christian 

eral  subject  of  "  possession "  see  F.  W.  H. 
Myers's  work  on  Human  Personality  and  Sur- 
vival after  Death,  Vol.  I.  (Longmans,  Green  & 
Co.,  New  York  and  London.)  Professor  William 
James  half  humorously  remarks  :  "The  time- 
honored  phenomenon  of  diabolical  possession  is 
on  the  point  of  being  admitted  by  the  scientist 
as  a  fact,  now  that  he  has  the  name  of  hystero- 
demonopathy  by  which  to  apperceive  it."  Va- 
rieties of  Religious  Experience,  p.  501,  note. 

^ee  Dictionary  of  Psychology,  art.  "Psychi- 
cal Research." 


30    Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

scholars  who  have  taken  part  in  it  are  re- 
proached as  deserters  to  the  camp  of  unbe- 
lief. They  are  accused  of  banishing  God 
from  his  world,  and  of  reducing  the  course 
of  events  to  an  order  of  agencies  quite 
undivine.  "  Miracle/*  writes  one  of  these 
brethren, *  "  is  the  personal  intervention  of 
God  into  the  chain  of  cause  and  effect." 
But  what  does  this  mean,  except  that,  when 
no  miracles  occur,  God  is  not  personally, 
i.e.  actively,  in  the  chain  of  natural  caijses 
and  effects  ?  As  Professor  Drummond 
says,  "  If  God  appears  periodically,  he  dis- 
appears periodically."  It  is  precisely  this 
view  of  the  subject  that  really  banishes 
God  from  his  world.  Those  who  thus  de- 
fine miracle  regard  miracles  as  having 
ceased  at  the  end  of  the  Apostolic  age  in 
the  first  century.  Except,  therefore,  for  the 
narrow  range  of  human  history  that  the  Bible 

1Dr.  Peloubet,  Teachers1  Commentary  on  the 
Acts,  1902. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion     }\ 

covers  in  time  and  place,  God  has  not  been 
personally  in  the  chain  of  natural  causes 
and  effects.  Thus  close  to  an  atheistic  con- 
ception of  nature  does  zeal  for  traditional 
orthodoxy  unwittingly  but  really  come. 

The  first  pages  of  the  Bible  correct  this 
error.  "While  the  earth  remaineth,"  so 
God  is  represented  as  assuring  Noah,  "seed- 
time and  harvest,  and  cold  and  heat,  and 
summer  and  winter,  and  day  and  night, 
shall  not  cease."  The  presence  of  God  in 
his  world  was  thus  to  be  evinced  by  his 
regular  sustentation  of  its  natural  order, 
rather  than  by  irregular  occurrences,  such 
as  the  deluge,  in  seeming  contravention  of 
it.  \To  seek  the  evidence  of  divine  activ- 
ity in  human  affairs  and  to  ground  one's 
faith  in  a  controlling  Providence  in  spo- 
radic and  cometary  phenomena,  rather  than 
in  the  constant  and  cumulative  signs  of  it 
to  be  seen  in  the  majestic  order  of  the 
starry  skies,  in  the  reign  of  intelligence 


32     Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

throughout  the  cosmos,  in  the  moral  evo- 
lution of  ancient  savagery  into  modern 
philanthropy,  in  the  historic  manifestation 
throughout  the  centuries  of  a  Power  not 
our  own  that  works  for  the  increase  of 
righteousness,  is  a  mode  of  thought  which 
in  our  time  is  being  steadily  and  surely 
outgrown.  It  is  one  of  those  "  idols  of  the 
tribe"  whose  power  alike  over  civilized 
and  uncivilized  men  is  broken  less  by  argu- 
ment than  by  the  ascent  of  man  to  wider 
horizons  of  knowledge. 

It  is  for  the  gain  of  religion  that  it 
should  be  broken,  — of  the  spiritual  religion 
whose  God  is  not  a  tradition,  a  reminis- 
cence, but  a  living  presence,  inhabiting  alike 
the  clod  and  the  star,  the  flower  in  the  cran- 
nied wall  and  the  life  of  man.  So  thinking 
of  God  the  religious  man  may  rightly  say,1 
"  If  it  is  more  difficult  to  believe  in  miracles, 

1  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott  in  The  Outlook,  February 
14,  1903. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion    33 

it  is  less  important.  If  the  extraordinary 
manifestations  of  God  recounted  in  ancient 
history  appear  less  credible,  the  ordinary 
manifestations  of  God  in  current  life  ap- 
pear more  real.  He  is  seen  in  American 
history  not  less  than  in  Hebrew  history; 
in  the  life  of  to-day  not  less  than  in  the 
life  of  long  ago." 


II 


II 


SYNOPSIS.  —  The  present  net  results  of  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  miraculous  element  in  the  Bible.  — 
Evaporation  of  the  former  evidential  value  of  mir- 
acles. —  Further  insistence  on  this  value  a  logical 
blunder.  —  The  transfer  of  miracles  from  the  artil- 
lery to  the  baggage  of  the  Church.  —  Probability 
of  a  further  reduction  of  the  list  of  miracles.  — 
Also  of  a  further  transfer  of  events  reputed  miracu- 
lous to  the  domain  of  history. 


cultivation  of   scientific  and 
historical  studies  during  the  last 
century,  especially  in   its   latter 
half,   has   deepened    the    conviction   that 

"Through  the    ages    one    increasing    purpose 
runs  ;  " 

has  disposed  a  growing  number  of 
thoughtful  minds  to  regard  occasional 
signs  and  wonders,  reported  from  ancient 
times,  as  far  less  evidential  for  the  reason- 
37 


38     Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

ableness  of  religious  faith  than  the  steady 
sustentation  of  the  Providential  order  and 
the  moral  progress  of  the  world.  Fully 
convinced  of  this,  we  should  now  estimate, 
before  proceeding  further,  the  present  net 
results  of  the  discussion,  so  far  as  it  has 
gone,  of  what  is  called  the  miraculous 
element  in  the  Bible. 

First,  its  former  evidential  value  in 
proof  of  divine  Revelation  is  gone  for 
the  men  of  to-day.  The  believer  in  a 
divine  Revelation  does  not  now,  if  he  is 
wise,  rest  his  case  at  all  on  the  miracles 
connected  with  its  original  promulgation, 
as  was  the  fashion  not  very  long  since. 
This  for  two  reasons;  chiefly  this:  that 
the  decisive  criterion  of  any  truth,  ethical 
or  physical,  must  be  truth  of  the  same 
kind.  Ethical  truth  must  be  ethically 
attested.  The  moral  and  religious  char- 
acter of  the  Revelation  presents  its  cre- 
dentials of  worth  in  its  history  of  the 


OF  THE     '     X 

t    UNIVERSITY   } 

Miracles  and  Supernaturftl:~J&j£ton<:  •$<) 

moral  and  religious  renovations  it  has 
wrought  both  in  individuals  and  in 
society.  This  is  its  proper  and  incon- 
trovertible attestation,  in  need  of  no 
corroboration  from  whatever  wonderful 
physical  occurrences  may  have  accom- 
panied its  first  utterance.  Words  of 
God  are  attested  as  such  by  the  work 
of  God  which  they  effect.  It  may  well 
be  believed  that  those  wonderful  occur- 
rences—  the  Biblical  name  for  which  is 
"signs,"  or  "powers,"  terms  not  carry- 
ing, like  "miracles,"  the  idea  of  some- 
thing contra-natural1  —  had  an  evidential 
value  for  those  to  whom  the  Revelation 
originally  came.  In  fact,  they  were  ap- 

1  The  Anglicized  Latin  word,  "  miracle," 
indiscriminately  used  in  the  Authorized  Version, 
denotes  the  superficial  character  of  the  act  or 
event  it  is  applied  to,  as  producing  wonder  or 
amazement  in  the  beholders.  The  terms  com- 
monly employed  in  the  New  Testament  (semeion, 


40    Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

pealed  to  by  the  bearers  of  the  Revela- 
tion as  evidencing  its  divine  origin  by 
the  mighty  works  of  divine  mercy  which 
they  wrought  for  sufferers  from  the  evils 
of  the  world.  But  whatever  their  eviden- 
tial value  to  the  eye-witnesses  at  that 
remote  day,  it  was  of  the  inevitably  vola- 
tile kind  that  exhales  away  like  a  per- 
fume with  lapse  of  time.  Historic  doubts 
attack  remote  events,  especially  when  of 
the  extraordinary  character  which  tempts 
the  narrator  to  that  magnifying  of  the 
marvellous  which  experience  has  found 
to  be  a  constantly  recurring  human  trait. 
It  is  simply  impossible  that  the  original 
evidential  value  of  the  "  signs "  accom- 
panying the  Revelation  should  continue 

a  sign ;  dunamis,  power ;  less  frequently  teras,  a 
portent)  are  of  deeper  significance,  and  connote 
the  inner  nature  of  the  occurrence,  either  as  re- 
quiring to  be  pondered  for  its  meaning,  or  as 
the  product  of  a  new  and  peculiar  energy. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion    41 

permanently  unimpaired.  To  employ  them 
now  as  "  evidences  of  Christianity,"  when 
the  Revelation  has  won  on  ethical  grounds 
recognition  of  its  divine  character  and  can 
summon  history  to  bear  witness  of  its 
divine  effects  in  the  moral  uplift  of  the 
world,  is  to  imperil  the  Christian  argu- 
ment by  the  preposterous  logical  blunder 
of  attempting  to  prove  the  more  certain 
by  the  less  certain. 

A  second  net  result  consequent  on  the 
preceding  may  be  described  as  the  trans- 
ference of  miracles  from  the  ordnance 
department  to  the  quartermaster's  depart- 
ment of  the  Church.  Until  recently  they 
were  actively  used  as  part  of  its  arma- 
ment, none  of  which  could  be  dispensed 
with.  Now  they  are  carried  as  part  of 
its  baggage,  impedimenta,  from  which 
everything  superfluous  must  be  removed. 
It  is  clearly  seen  that  to  retain  all  is  to 
imperil  the  whole.  That  there  are  mir- 


42     Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

acles  and  miracles  is  patent  to  minds 
that  have  learned  to  scan  history  more 
critically  than  when  a  scholar  like  John 
Milton  began  his  History  of  England 
with  the  legend  of  the  voyage  of  "  Brute 
the  Trojan."  One  may  reasonably  be- 
lieve that  Jesus  healed  a  case  of  violent 
insanity  at  Gadara,  and  reasonably  dis- 
believe that  the  fire  of  heaven  was  twice 
obedient  to  Elijah's  call  to  consume  the 
military  companies  sent  to  arrest  him. 
Cultivated  discernment  does  not  now  put 
all  Biblical  miracles  on  a  common  level 
of  credibility,  any  more  than  the  histor- 
ical work  of  Herodotus  and  that  of 
the  late  Dr.  Gardiner.  To  defend  them 
all  is  not  to  vindicate,  but  to  discredit  all 
alike.  The  elimination  of  the  indefen- 
sible, the  setting  aside  of  the  legendary, 
the  transference  of  the  supposedly  mi- 
raculous to  the  order  of  natural  powers 
and  processes  so  far  as  vindicable  ground 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion      43 

for  such  critical  treatment  is  discovered, 
is  the  only  way  to  answer  the  first  of 
all  questions  concerning  the  Bible:  How 
much  of  this  is  credible  history  ?  Thus 
it  is  not  only  thoroughly  reasonable,  but 
is  in  the  interest  of  a  reasonable  belief 
that  divine  agency  is  revealed  rather  by 
the  upholding  of  the  established  order 
of  Nature  than  by  any  alleged  interfer- 
ence therewith.  With  what  God  has 
established  God  never  interferes.  To 
allege  his  interference  with  his  estab- 
lished order  is  virtually  to  deny  his  con- 
stant immanence  therein,  a  failure  to 
recognize  the  fundamental  fact  that  "  Na- 
ture is  Spirit,"  as  Principal  Fairbairn  has 
said,  and  all  its  processes  and  powers 
the  various  modes  of  the  energizing  of 
the  divine  Will. 

A  third  net  result  now  highly  probable 
is  a  still  further  reduction  of  the  list  of 
reputed  miracles.  The  critical  process  of 


44     Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

discriminating  the  historical  from  the  leg- 
endary, and  the  natural  from  the  non- 
natural,  is  still  so  comparatively  recent 
that  it  can  hardly  be  supposed  to  have 
reached  its  limit.  Nor  can  it  be  stayed 
by  any  impeachment  of  it  as  hostile  to 
Christianity,  whose  grand  argument  appeals 
to  its  present  ethical  effects,  not  to  ancient 
thaumaturgical  accompaniments.  There 
is,  however,  a  considerable  class  of  cases 
in  which  the  advancing  critical  process 
is  likely  even  to  gain  credibility  for  the 
Biblical  narrative  in  a  point  where  it  is 
now  widely  doubted  —  the  resuscitations 
of  the  apparently  dead.  Among  all  the 
Biblical  miracles  none  have  more  probably 
a  secure  historical  basis. 


Ill 


Ill 

SYNOPSIS. — Arbitrary  criticism  of  the  Biblical 
narratives  of  the  raising  of  the  "dead."  —  Facts 
which  it  ignores.  —  The  subject  related  to  the 
phenomena  of  trance,  and  records  of  premature 
burial.  —  The  resuscitation  in  Elisha's  tomb  proba- 
bly historical. —  Jesus'  raising  of  the  ruler's  daugh- 
ter plainly  a  case  of  this  kind.  —  His  raising  of  the 
widow's  son  probably  such.  — The  hypothesis  that 
his  raising  of  Lazarus  may  also  have  been  such 
critically  examined.  —  The  record  allows  this  sup- 
position. —  Further  considerations  favoring  it : 
i .  The  real  interests  of  Christianity  secure.  — 2.  The 
miracle  as  a  work  of  mercy.  —  3.  Incompetency  of 
the  bystanders'  opinion.  —  4.  Congruity  with  the 
general  conception  of  the  healing  works  of  Jesus, 
as  wrought  by  a  peculiar  psychical  power.  —  Other 
cases.  —  The  resurrection  of  Jesus  an  event  in  a 
wholly  different  order  of  things.  —  The  practical 
result  of  regarding  these  resuscitations  as  in  the 
order  of  nature. 

|F    resuscitation    from    apparent 
death    seven    cases   in    all    are 
recorded,  —  three    in    the   Old 
Testament  and  four  in  the  New.      Some 
47 


48    Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

critics  arbitrarily  reject  all  but  one  of  these 
as  legendary.  Thus  Oscar  Holzmann,  in 
his  recent  Leben  Jesu,  treats  the  raising 
of  the  widow's  son,  and  of  Lazarus.  But 
he  accepts  the  case  of  the  ruler's  daughter 
on  the  ground  that  Jesus  is  reported  as 
saying  that  it  was  not  a  case  of  real  but 
only  of  apparent  death,  —  "the  child  is 
not  dead,  but  sleepeth."  But  for  the  pres- 
ervation of  this  saving  declaration  in  the 
record,  this  case  also  would  have  been 
classed  with  the  others  as  unhistorical. 
And  yet  the  admission  of  one  clear  case 
of  simulated  death,  so  like  real  death  as 
to  deceive  all  the  onlookers  but  Jesus, 
might  reasonably  check  the  critic  with 
the  suggestion  that  it  may  not  have  been 
a  solitary  case.1  The  headlong  assump- 

1  An  objection  to  the  historicity  of  the  rais- 
ing of  Lazarus  which  is  made  on  the  ground 
that  so  great  a  work,  if  historical,  would  have 
been  related  by  more  than  one  of  the  Evange- 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion    49 

tion  involved  in  the  discrimination  made 
between  these  two  classes,  viz.  that  in  a 
case  of  apparent  but  unreal  death  the 
primitive  tradition  can  be  depended  on 
to  put  the  fact  upon  record,  is  in  the 
highest  degree  arbitrary  and  unwarrant- 
able. 

The  scepticism  which  lightly  contradicts 
the  Biblical  narratives  of  the  raising  of  the 
"dead"  to  life  is  seemingly  ignorant  of 
facts  that  go  far  to  place  these  upon  firm 
ground  as  historical  occurrences.  Cata- 

lists,  yields  on  reflection  the  possibility  that 
Jesus  may  have  effected  more  than  the  three 
raisings  recorded  of  him.  John  is  the  sole 
narrator  of  the  raising  of  Lazarus.  But  he  omits 
notice  of  the  two  raisings  recorded  by  the  other 
Evangelists,  while  Matthew  and  Mark  do  not 
record  the  raising  of  the  widow's  son  recorded 
by  Luke.  All  this  suggests  that  the  record 
may  have  preserved  for  us  specimens  rather 
than  a  complete  list  of  this  class  of  miracles. 
(Compare  John  xxi.  25.) 


50    Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

lepsy,  or  the  simulation  of  death  by  a 
trance,  in  which  the  body  is  sometimes 
cold  and  rigid,  sensation  gone,  the  heart 
still,  is  well  known  to  medical  men.1  In 
early  times  such  a  condition  would  inevi- 
tably have  been  regarded  and  treated  as 
actual  death,  without  the  least  suspicion 
that  it  was  not  so.  Even  now,  the  dread- 
ful mistake  of  so  regarding  it  sometimes 
occurs.  So  cautious  a  journal  as  the 
London  Spectator  a  few  years  ago  ex- 
pressed the  belief  that  "  a  distinct  per- 
centage "  of  premature  burials  "  occurs 
every  year "  in  England. 

1  "We  have  frequent  cases  of  trance,  .  .  .  where 
the  parties  seem  to  die,  but  after  a  time  the 
spirit  returns,  and  life  goes  on  as  before.  In 
all  this  there  is  no  miracle.  Why  may  not  the 
resuscitations  in  Christ's  time  possibly  have  been 
similar  cases  ?  Is  not  this  less  improbable  than 
that  the  natural  order  of  the  universe  should 
have  been  set  aside?  "  —  The  Problem  of  Final 
Destiny,  by  William  B.  Brown,  D.D.,  1899. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion     51 

The  proper  line  of  critical  approach  to 
the  study  of  the  Biblical  narratives  of  the 
raising  of  the  "  dead  "  is  through  the  well- 
known  facts  of  the  deathlike  trance  and 
premature  burial. 

Where  burial  occurred,  as  in  the  East, 
immediately  after  the  apparent  death,1  re- 
suscitation must  have  been  rare.  Yet 
cases  of  it  were  not  unknown.  Pliny  has 
a  chapter  "on  those  who  have  revived 
on  being  carried  forth  for  burial."  Lord 
Bacon  states  that  of  this  there  have  been 
"  very  many  cases."  A  French  writer  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  Bruhier,  in  his 
"Dissertations  sur  V  Incertitude  de  la 
Mort  et  r Abus  des  Enterrements"  records 
seventy-two  cases  of  mistaken  pronounce- 
ment of  death,  fifty-three  of  revival  in  the 
coffin  before  burial,  and  fifty-four  of  burial 

1  On  account  of  the  ceremonial "  uncleanness  " 
caused  by  the  dead  body.  See  Numbers  v.  2, 
and  many  similar  passages. 


52     Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

alive.  A  locally  famous  and  thoroughly 
attested  case  in  this  country  is  that  of  the 
Rev.  William  Tennent,  pastor  in  Freehold, 
New  Jersey,  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
who  lay  apparently  dead  for  three  days, 
reviving  from  trance  just  as  his  delayed 
funeral  was  about  to  proceed.  One  who 
keeps  a  scrap-book  could  easily  collect 
quite  an  assortment  of  such  cases,  and  of 
such  others  as  have  a  tragic  ending,  both 
from  domestic  and  foreign  journals.  A 
work  published  some  years  ago  by  Dr. 
F.  Hartmann1  exhibits  one  hundred  and 
eight  cases  as  typical  among  over  seven 
hundred  that  have  been  authenticated.2 

1  Buried  Alive  (Universal  Truth    Publishing 
Co.,  Chicago) .    See  also  Premature  Burial,  by 
D.  Walsh  (William  Wood  &  Co.,  New  York),  and 
Premature  Burial,  by  W.  Tebb  and  E.  P.  Vol- 
lum   (New  Amsterdam  Book  Co.,  New  York). 

2  Other  writers  might  be  mentioned,  as  Mme. 
Necker  (1790),  Dr.  Vigm§  (1841).     Yet  on  the 
other  hand  it  is  alleged,  that  "  none  of  the  nu- 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion      53 

Facts  like  these  have  been  strangely  over- 
looked in  the  hasty  judgment  prompted 
by  prejudice  against  whatever  has  ob- 
tained credence  as  miraculous.  Some 
significant  considerations  must  be  se- 
riously entertained. 

It  cannot  be  that  no  such  facts  occurred 
in  the  long  periods  covered  by  the  Biblical 
writers.  Occurring,  it  is  extremely  improb- 
able that  they  should  have  altogether 
escaped  embodiment  in  popular  tradition 
and  its  record.  Furthermore,  while  on 
one  hand  the  custom  of  speedy  burial 
rendered  them  much  rarer  than  they  are 
now  under  other  conditions,  and  so  much 

merous  stories  of  this  dreadful  accident  which 
have  obtained  credence  from  time  to  time  seem 
to  be  authentic "  (American  Cyclopedia,  art. 
"  Burial ").  Allowing  a  wide  margin  for  exag- 
geration and  credulity,  there  is  certainly  a 
residuum  of  fact.  A  correspondent  of  the 
(London)  Spectator  a  few  years  since  testified 
to  a  distressing  case  in  his  own  family. 


54    Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

the  more  extraordinary,  the  universal  ig- 
norance of  the  causes  involved  would 
have  accepted  resuscitation  as  veritable 
restoration  from  actual  death.  As  such 
it  would  have  passed  into  tradition.  In 
cases  where  it  had  come  to  pass  in  con- 
nection with  the  efforts  of  a  recognized 
prophet,  or  through  any  contact  with  him, 
it  would  certainly  have  been  regarded  as 
a  genuine  miracle. 

Among  the  raisings  of  the  "  dead  "  re- 
corded in  the  Scriptures  probably  none 
has  been  so  widely  doubted  by  critical 
readers  as  the  story  in  the  thirteenth  chap- 
ter of  the  second  book  of  Kings,  in  which  a 
corpse  is  restored  to  life  by  contact  with 
the  bones  of  Elisha.  Dean  Stanley's  re- 
mark upon  the  suspicious  similarity  be- 
tween the  miracles  related  of  Elisha  and 
those  found  in  Roman  Catholic  legends 
of  great  saints  here  seems  quite  pertinent. 
Let  the  record  speak  for  itself. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion     55 

"  And  Elisha  died  and  they  buried  him. 
Now  the  bands  of  the  Moabites  invaded 
the  land  at  the  coming  in  of  the  year. 
And  it  came  to  pass,  as  they  were  burying 
a  man,  that,  behold,  they  spied  a  band  ; 
and  they  cast  the  man  into  the  sepulchre  of 
Elisha ;  and  as  soon  as  the  man  touched 
the  bones  of  Elisha,  he  revived,  and  stood 
up  on  his  feet." 

The  bizarre  character  of  such  a  story 
excusably  predisposes  many  a  critic  to 
stamp  it  as  fabricated  to  enhance  the 
glory  of  the  great  prophet  who  had  been 
a  pillar  of  the  throne.  Yet  nothing  is 
more  likely  than  that  tradition  has  here 
preserved  a  bit  of  history,  extraordinary, 
but  real.  There  is  not  the  least  improba- 
bility in  regarding  the  case  as  one  of  the 
many  revivals  from  the  deathlike  trance 
that  have  been  noted  by  writers  ancient 
and  modern.  It  is  entirely  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  the  trance  in  which  the  seem- 
ingly dead  man  lay  was  broken  either  by 


56     Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

the  shock  of  his  fall  into  the  prophet's 
tomb,  or  coincidently  therewith ;  and 
stranger  coincidences  have  happened. 
Such  a  happening  would  be  precisely 
the  sort  of  thing  to  live  in  popular  tra- 
dition, and  to  be  incorporated  into  the 
annals  of  the  time. 

Here  it  may  be  rejoined  that  this  is 
only  a  hypothesis.  Only  that,  to  be  sure. 
But  so  is  the  allegation  that  the  story  is 
a  mere  fantastic  fabrication  only  a  hy- 
pothesis. Demonstration  of  the  actual 
fact  past  all  controversy  being  out  of 
the  question,  all  that  can  be  offered  for 
the  attempt  to  rate  the  narrative  at  its 
proper  value,  either  as  history  or  as  fiction, 
is  hypothesis.  The  choice  lies  for  us 
between  two  hypotheses.  Surely,  that 
hypothesis  is  the  more  credible  which  is 
based  on  a  solid  body  of  objective  facts, 
and  meets  all  the  conditions  of  the  case. 

Will  it  be  replied  to  this  that  the  critics 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion     57 

can  show  for  their  hypothesis  the  ad- 
mitted fact  of  the  human  proclivity  to 
invent  legends  of  miracle  ?  The  decisive 
answer  is  that  the  burden  of  proof  rests 
on  him  who  contests  any  statement  os- 
tensibly historical.  If  such  a  statement 
be  found  to  square  with  admitted  objective 
facts,  it  must  be  accepted  notwithstanding 
considerations  drawn  from  the  subjective 
tendency  to  invent  extraordinary  tales. 

Were  raisings  of  the  "dead"  recorded 
in  the  Old  Testament  alone,  objection 
would  less  often  be  offered  to  this  trans- 
ference of  them,  along  with  other  occur- 
rences once  deemed  miraculous,  to  a  place 
in  the  natural  order  of  things.  The  sta- 
tistics of  premature  burial  and  of  the 
resuscitation  of  the  apparently  dead  be- 
fore burial  are  sufficiently  strong  to  throw 
grave  doubt  on  any  contention  that  the 
resuscitations  narrated  of  Elijah1  and 
1  Kings  xvii.  17-23. 


58     Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

Elisha1  do  not  belong  in  that  historical 
series.  It  has  been  frequently  observed, 
however,  that  there  is  much  reluctance  to 
apply  to  the  New  Testament  the  methods 
and  canons  of  criticism  that  are  applied 
to  the  Old.  It  will  be  so  in  the  present 
case,  through  apprehension  of  somehow 
detracting  from  the  distinctive  glory  of 
Christ.  That  fear  will  not  disturb  one 
who  sees  that  glory  not  in  his  "  mighty 
works,"  the  like  of  which  were  wrought 
by  the  prophets,  but  in  the  spiritual  maj- 
esty of  his  personality,  the  divineness  of  his 
message  to  the  world,  and  of  the  life  and 
death  that  illustrated  it. 

One  case,  at  least,  among  Jesus'  rais- 
ings of  the  "  dead,"  that  of  the  young 
daughter  of  the  ruler  of  the  synagogue,2 
is  admitted  even  by  sceptical  critics  to 
have  been  a  resuscitation  from  the  trance 

1  Kings  iv.  32-36. 

2  Mark  v.  35-43- 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion     59 

that  merely  simulates  death.  But  the  fact 
that  there  is  a  record  of  his  saying  in 
this  case,  "the  child  is  not  dead,  but 
sleepeth,"  and  no  record  of  his  saying 
the  same  at  the  bier  of  the  widow's  son,1 
is  slight  ground,  yet  all  the  ground  there 
is,  against  the  great  probabilities  to  the 
contrary,  for  regarding  the  latter  case  as 
so  transcendently  different  from  the  former 
as  the  actual  reembodiment  of  a  departed 
spirit  recalled  from  another  world.  Were 
these  the  only  two  cases  of  restoration 
to  life  in  the  ministry  of  Jesus,  it  is  most 
probable  that  they  would  be  regarded  as 
of  the  same  kind. 

The  raising  of  Lazarus 2  presents  pecu- 
liar features,  in  view  of  which  it  is  gen- 
erally regarded  as  of  another  kind,  and 
the  greatest  of  miracles,  so  stupendous 
that  the  Rev.  W.  J.  Dawson,  in  his  recent 

aLuke  vii.  12-16. 
2  John  xi.  1 1-44. 


60    Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

Life  of  Christ,  written  from  an  evangeli- 
cal standpoint,  says  of  it :  "  Even  the 
most  devout  mind  may  be  forgiven  occa- 
sional pangs  of  incredulity."  But  the 
considerations  already  presented  are  cer- 
tainly sufficient  to  justify  a  reexamination 
of  the  case.  And  it  is  to  be  borne  in 
mind  that  the  question  at  issue  is,  not 
what  the  eye-witnesses  at  that  time  be- 
lieved, not  what  the  Church  from  that 
time  to  this  has  believed,  not  what  we 
are  willing  to  believe,  or  would  like  to 
believe,  but  what  all  the  facts  with  any 
bearing  on  the  case,  taken  together,  fully 
justify  us  in  believing  as  to  the  real  na- 
ture of  it. 

What  Jesus  is  recorded  as  saying  of 
it  is,  of  course,  of  prime  importance. 
"  Our  friend  Lazarus  is  fallen  asleep,  but 
I  go  that  I  may  awake  him  out  of  sleep/* 
Were  this  all,  the  case  might  easily  have 
been  classed  as  one  of  trance.  The  dis- 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion    61 

ciples,  however,  understood  Jesus  to  speak 
of  natural  sleep.  "  Then  Jesus  therefore 
said  unto  them  plainly,  Lazarus  is  dead." 
Tradition  puts  the  maximum  meaning 
into  this  word  "  dead."  But  if  this  word 
here  qualifies  the  preceding  word,  "  fallen 
asleep,"  so  also  is  it  qualified  by  that; 
the  two  are  mutually  explanatory,  not 
contradictory.  These  alternatives  are  be- 
fore us :  Is  the  maximum  or  the  minimum 
meaning  to  be  assigned  to  the  crucial 
word  "dead"?  For  the  minimum,  one 
can  say  that  a  deathly  trance,  already 
made  virtual  death  by  immediate  inter- 
ment, would  amply  justify  Jesus  in  using 
the  word  "dead"  in  order  to  impress  the 
disciples  with  the  gravity  of  the  case,  as 
not  a  natural  but  a  deathly,  and,  in  the 
existing  situation,  a  fatal  sleep.  For  the 
maximum,  no  more  can  be  advanced  than 
the  hazardous  assertion  that  Jesus  must 
have  used  the  word  with  technical  pre- 


62     Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

cision  in  its  customary  sense;  an  asser- 
tion of  course  protected  from  disproof 
by  our  ignorance  of  the  actual  fact.1  But 

aWas  Jesus  aware  that  Lazarus  was  really 
not  dead  ?  It  is  impossible  to  reach  a  positive 
conclusion.  In  some  directions  his  knowledge 
was  certainly  limited.  That  he  was  not  aware 
of  the  reality  might  be  inferred  from  his  seem- 
ing to  have  allowed  his  act  to  pass  for  what, 
in  the  view  of  it  here  suggested,  it  was  not,  — 
the  recall  to  life  of  one  actually  dead.  This, 
however,  assumes  the  completeness  of  a  record 
whose  silence  on  this  point  cannot  be  pressed 
as  conclusive.  It  is,  indeed,  unlikely  that  Jesus 
knew  all  that  medical  men  now  know.  But 
awareness  of  any  fact  may  be  in  varying  de- 
grees from  serious  suspicion  up  to  positive  cer- 
titude. While  far  from  positiveness,  awareness 
may  exist  in  a  degree  that  gives  courage  for 
resolute  effort  resulting  in  clear  and  full  veri- 
fication. Jesus  may  have  been  ignorant  of  the 
objective  reality  of  Lazarus' s  condition,  and 
yet  have  been  very  hopeful  of  being  empowered 
by  the  divine  aid  he  prayed  for  (John  xi.  41) 
to  cope  with  it  successfully. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion     63 

whatever  support  this  view  of  the  case 
derives  from  such  ignorance  is  overbal- 
anced by  the  support  supplied  to  the 
other  view  by  the  long  history  of  revivals 
from  the  deathly  trance,  and  by  the  proba- 
bilities which  that  history  creates. 

Many,  to  whom  the  view  here  proposed 
seems  not  only  new,  but  unwelcome,  and 
even  revolutionary,  may  reasonably  pre- 
fer to  suspend  judgment  for  reflection; 
but  meanwhile  some  further  considera- 
tions may  be  entertained. 

i.  Aside  from  the  unwillingness  to  aban- 
don a  long-cherished  belief  on  any  sub- 
ject whatever,  which  is  both  a  natural, 
and,  when  not  pushed  to  an  unreason- 
able length,  a  desirable  brake  on  all 
inconsiderate  change,  no  practical  inter- 
est is  threatened  by  the  adoption  of  the 
view  here  suggested.  Religious  interest, 
so  far  as  it  is  also  intelligent,  is  certainly 
not  threatened.  The  evidences  of  Jesus' 


64    Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

divine  character  and  mission  resting,  as 
for  modern  men  it  rests,  not  on  remote 
wonders,  but  on  now  acknowledged  facts 
of  an  ethical  and  spiritual  kind,  is  alto- 
gether independent  of  our  conclusion 
whether  it  was  from  actual  or  only  ap- 
parent death  that  Lazarus  was  raised. 
Since  all  the  mighty  works  wrought  by 
Jesus,  and  this  among  them,  were  identi- 
cal in  type  with  those  wrought  by  the 
ancient  prophets,  with  whom  his  coun- 
trymen classed  him  in  his  lifetime,  their 
evidential  significance  could  be,  even 
for  the  eye-witnesses  at  that  tomb,  no 
greater  for  him  than  for  an  Elisha, — 
signs  of  a  divine  mission  attesting  itself 
by  works  of  mercy. 

2.  As  works  of  mercy  these  raisings 
from  the  "dead,"  including  that  of 
Lazarus,  rank  far  higher  in  the  view  of 
them  here  proposed  than  in  the  tradi- 
tional view.  This  regards  them  as  the 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion     65 

recall  of  departed  spirits  from  what  is 
hoped  to  be  "  a  better  world."  Yet  this, 
while  it  turns  sorrow  for  a  time  into  joy, 
involves  not  only  the  recurrence  of  that 
sorrow  in  all  its  keenness,  but  also  a 
second  tasting  of  the  pains  preliminary 
to  the  death-gate,  when  the  time  comes 
to  pass  that  gate  again.  But  in  the 
other  view,  a  raising  from  the  death  that 
is  only  simulated  is  a  merciful  deliver- 
ance from  a  calamity  greater  than  simple 
death,  if  that  be  any  calamity  at  all, — 
the  fate  of  burial  alive.  In  the  former 
view,  therefore,  the  quality  of  mercy, 
distinctive  of  the  mighty  works  of  Jesus, 
is  imperfectly  demonstrable.  In  the  pres- 
ent view,  as  the  rescue  of  the  living  from 
death  in  one  of  its  most  horrible  forms, 
it  is  abundantly  conspicuous. 

3.  The  onlookers  by  the  tomb  of  Laza- 
rus doubtless  regarded  his  awakening  as 
revival  from  actual  death.  Their  opinion, 


66    Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

however,  does  not  bind  our  judgment 
any  more  than  it  is  bound  by  the  opinion 
of  other  onlookers,  that  Jesus'  healing  of 
the  insane  and  epileptic  was  through  the 
expulsion  of  demons  that  possessed  them. 
In  each  instance  it  was  understood  as  a 
sign  of  control  over  beings  belonging  to 
another  world.  But  such  an  attestation 
of  Jesus*  divine  mission,  having  been  su- 
perseded for  us  by  proofs  of  higher 
character,  is  now  no  more  needful  for 
us  in  the  case  of  the  "  dead "  than  in 
the  case  of  the  "  demons." 

4.  The  power  of  breaking  the  deathly 
trance,  of  quickening  the  dormant  life, 
reenergizing  the  collapsed  nervous  organ- 
ism, and  ending  its  paralysis  of  sensa- 
tion and  motion,  may  be  reasonably  re- 
garded as  power  of  the  same  psychical 
kind  that  Jesus  regularly  exerted  in  heal- 
ing the  sufferers  from  nervous  disorders 
who  were  reputed  victims  of  demoniac 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion    67 

possession.1  In  this  view  these  resusci- 
tations from  apparent  death  appear  in 
natural  coherence  with  the  many  other 
works  of  mercy  that  Jesus  wrought  as 
the  Great  Physician  of  his  people,  and 
may  be  regarded  as  the  crown  and  con- 
summation of  all  his  restorative  minis- 
tries. Jesus'  thanksgiving  after  the  tomb 
had  been  opened  —  "Father,  I  thank 
thee  that  thou  hast  heard  me"  —  shows 
that  he  had  girded  himself  for  a  su- 
preme effort  by  concentrating  the  utmost 
energy  of  his  spirit  in  prayer.  Physically 
parallel  with  this  was  the  intensity  of 
voice  put  into  his  call  to  the  occupant 
of  the  tomb.  This  is  better  represented 
in  the  original  than  in  our  translation: 
"  He  shouted  with  a  great  voice,  '  Laza- 
rus, come  forth/ "  The  whole  record 
indicates  the  utmost  tension  of  all  his 
energies,  and  closely  comports  with  the 
1  See  pages  28,  29,  Note. 


68     Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

view  that  this  stood  to  the  sequel  in  the 
relation  of  cause  to  effect.1  Another  cir- 
cumstance not  without  bearing  on  the 
case  is  the  energizing  power  of  the  in- 
tense sympathy  with  the  bereaved  family 
that  stirred  the  soul  of  Jesus  to  weep 
and  groan  with  them.  And  it  is  not 
without  significance  that  this  strong  fac- 
tor appears  active  in  the  larger  number 
of  the  Biblical  cases,  —  three  of  them 

1  Jesus'  works  of  healing  are  explicitly  attrib- 
uted by  the  Evangelists  to  a  peculiar  power  that 
issued  from  him.  In  Mark  v.  30,  Luke  vi.  19, 
and  viii.  46,  the  original  word  dunamis,  which 
the  Authorized  Version  translates  "virtue,"  is 
more  correctly  rendered  "power"  in  the  Re- 
vised Version.  Especially  noticeable  is  the 
peculiar  phraseology  of  Mark  v.  30  :  "  Jesus 
perceiving  in  himself  that  the  power  proceeding 
from  him  had  gone  forth  (R.  V.)."  The  pecu- 
liar circumstances  of  the  case  suggest  that  the 
going  forth  of  this  power  might  be  motived 
sub- consciously,  as  well  as  by  conscious  volition. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion     69 

only  children,  two  of  these  the  children 
of  the  pitiable  class  of  widows. 

Peculiar,  then,  as  was  the  case  of  Laza- 
rus, our  examination  of  it  reveals  no  sub- 
stantial ground  for  insisting  that  it  was 
essentially  unlike  the  previous  case  of  the 
ruler's  daughter,  that  it  was  the  bringing 
back  into  a  decaying  body  of  a  spirit  that 
had  entered  into  the  world  of  departed 
souls.  The  actual  fact,  of  course,  is  in- 
demonstrable. Our  conclusion  has  to  be 
formed  wholly  upon  the  probabilities  of 
the  case,  and  must  be  formed  in  a  reason- 
able choice  between  the  greater  probability 
and  the  less. 

The  restoration  of  Dorcas  to  life  by 
Peter,  recorded  in  the  book  of  Acts,1  needs 
no  special  discussion  beyond  the  various 
considerations  already  adduced  in  this 
chapter.  The  case  of  Eutychus,  recorded 
in  the  same  book,2  requires  mention  only 
1  Acts  ix.  36-42.  2  Acts  xx.  9-13. 


70    Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

lest  it  should  seem  to  have  been  forgotten, 
as  it  is  not  in  point  at  all.  The  record 
makes  it  highly  probable  that  the  sup- 
posed death  was  nothing  more  than  the 
loss  of  consciousness  for  a  few  hours  in 
consequence  of  a  fall  from  the  window. 

If  one  should  here  suggest  that  no  men- 
tion has  yet  been  made  of  the  resurrection 
of  Jesus  himself,  it  must  be  pointed  out 
that  this  is  a  fact  of  a  totally  different 
kind  from  any  of  the  foregoing  cases.  To 
speak,  as  many  do,  of  the  "  resurrection  of 
Lazarus  "  is  a  misuse  of  words.  Resusci- 
tation to  life  in  this  world,  and  resurrec- 
tion, the  rising  up  of  the  released  spirit 
into  the  life  of  the  world  to  come,  are  as 
distinct  as  are  the  worlds  to  which  they 
severally  belong.  We  here  consider  only 
the  raisings  which  restored  to  the  virtually 
dead  their  interrupted  mortal  life.  The 
rising  from  the  mortal  into  the  immortal 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion     71 

state  belongs  to  an  entirely  different  field 
of  study. 

Apart,  then,  from  traditional  preposses- 
sions, examination  of  the  Biblical  narratives 
discloses  nothing  to  invalidate  the  hypothe- 
sis which  one  who  is  acquainted  with  the 
copious  record  of  apparent  but  unreal 
death  must  seriously  and  impartially  con- 
sider. The  reputedly  miraculous  raisings 
of  the  "  dead  "  related  in  both  the  Old  and 
the  New  Testament  may,  with  entire  rea- 
son, and  without  detriment  to  religion,  be 
classed  with  such  as  are  related  outside  of 
the  Scriptures,  in  ancient  times  as  well  as 
modern,  and  as  phenomena  wholly  within 
the  natural  order,  however  extraordinary. 
The  practical  result  of  such  a  conclusion  is 
likely  to  be  a  gain  for  the  historicity  of  the 
Scripture  narratives  in  the  estimate  of  a 
large  class  of  thoughtful  minds. 


IV 


IV 

SYNOPSIS.  —  A  clearer  conception  of  miracle  ap- 
proached. —  Works  of  Jesus  once  reputed  miraculous 
not  so  reputed  now,  since  not  now  transcending,  as 
once,  the  existing  range  of  knowledge  and  power.  — 
This  transfer  of  the  miraculous  to  the  natural  likely 
to  continue.  —  No  hard  and  fast  line  between  the 
miraculous  and  the  non-miraculous.  —  Miracle  a  pro- 
visional word,  its  application  narrowing  in  the  en- 
larging mastery  of  the  secrets  of  nature  and  life. 

this  point  it  seems  possible  to 
approach  a  clearer  understand- 
ing of  the  proper  meaning  to 
attach  to  the  generally  ill-defined  and  hazy 
term  miracle^  Matthew  Arnold's  fantastic 

la  Early  and  mediaeval  theologians  agree  in 
conceiving  the  miraculous  as  being  above,  not 
contrary  to,  nature.  The  question  entered  on 
a  new  phase  when  Hume  defined  a  miracle  as 
a  violation  of  nature,  and  asserted  the  impos- 
sibility of  substantiating  its  actual  occurrence, 

75 


76    Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

illustration  of  the  idea  of  miracle  by  sup- 
posing a  pen  changed  to  a  pen-wiper  may 
fit  some  miracles,  especially  those  of  the 
Catholic  hagiology,  but,  if  applied  to  those 
of  Jesus,  would  be  a  caricature.  In  the 
New  Testament  a  reputed  miracle  is  not 
any  sort  of  wonderful  work  upon  any  sort 
of  occasion,  but  an  act  of  benevolent  will 
exerted  for  an  immediate  benefit,1  and 
transcending  the  then  existing  range  of 
human  intelligence  to  explain  and  power 
to  achieve.  The  historic  reality  of  at  least 

The  modern  discussion  has  proceeded  largely  in 
view  of  Hume's  destructive  criticism.  Assum- 
ing the  possibility  of  a  miracle,  the  questions 
of  fact  and  of  definition  remain." — Dictionary 
of  Psychology. 

"When  we  find  the  definition  for  which  we 
are  searching,  the  miraculous  will  no  longer  be 
a  problem."  —  PROFESSOR  W.  SANDAY,  at  the 
Anglican  Church  Congress,  1902. 

1  For  exceptions  see  Matthew  xxi.  19;  Acts 
xiii.  10,  ii. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion    77 

some  such  acts  performed  by  Jesus  is 
acknowledged  by  critics  as  free  from  the 
faintest  trace  of  orthodox  bias  as  Keim : 
"  The  picture  of  Jesus,  the  worker  of  mira- 
cles, belongs  to  the  first  believers  in  Christ, 
and  is  no  invention." 

It  has  already  been  noted  that  a  consider- 
able number  of  the  then  reputed  miracles 
of  Jesus,  particularly  his  works  of  heal- 
ing, do  not  now,  as  then,  transcend  the 
existing  range  of  knowledge  and  power, 
and  accordingly  are  no  longer  reputed 
miraculous.  And  one  cannot  reasonably 
believe  that  a  limit  to  the  understanding 
and  control  of  forces  in  Nature  and  mind 
that  now  are  more  or  less  occult  has  been 
already  reached.  It  is,  therefore,  not  in- 
credible that  some  of  the  mighty  works 
of  Jesus,  which  still  transcend  the  existing 
limits  of  knowledge  and  power,  and  so  are 
still  reputed  miraculous,  and  are  suspected 
by  many  as  unhistorical,  may  in  some  yet 


78     Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

remote  and  riper  stage  of  humanity  be 
transferred,  as  some  have  already  been, 
to  the  class  of  the  non-miraculous  and 
natural. 

Dr.  Robbins,  Dean  of  the  General  Theo- 
logical Seminary,  New  York,  after  re- 
marking that  "  the  word  miracle  has  done 
more  to  introduce  confusion  into  Chris- 
tian Evidences  than  any  other,"  goes  on 
to  say :  "  To  animals  "  certain  events  to 
them  inexplicable  are  signs  of  the  pres- 
ence of  human  intelligence  and  power. 
To  men  these  miracles  of  Christ  are  signs 
of  divine  intelligence  and  power.  But 
how  is  miracle  to  be  differentiated  from 
other  providential  dealings  of  God?  Not 
by  removing  him  further  from  common 
events.  Abstruse  speculations  concern- 
ing the  relation  of  miracles  to  other 
physical  phenomena  may  be  safely  left 
to  the  adjustment  of  an  age  which  shall 
have  advanced  to  a  more  perfect  synthe- 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion    79 

sis   of   knowledge   than   the   present    can 
boast." ! 

The  truth  to  which  such  considerations 
conduct  is,  that  no  hard  and  fast  line  can 
be  drawn  between  the  miraculous  and  the 
non-miraculous.  To  the  untutored  mind, 
like  that  of  the  savage  who  thought  it 
miraculous  that  a  chip  with  a  message 
written  on  it  had  talked  to  the  recipient, 
the  simplest  thing  that  he  cannot  explain 
is  miraculous :  "  omne  ignotnm  pro  miri- 
fico"  said  Tacitus.  As  the  range  of 
knowledge  and  power  widens,  the  range 
of  the  miraculous  narrows  correspondingly. 
Some  twenty  years  since,  the  International 
Sunday-school  Lessons  employed  as  a 
proof  of  the  divinity  of  Christ  the  reputedly 
miraculous  knowledge  which  he  evinced 
in  his  first  interview  with  Nathanael  of 
a  solitary  hour  in  Nathanael's  experience.2 

1  A  Christian  Apologetic y  p.  97. 

2  John  i.  47~5°- 


80    Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

Since  then  it  has  been  demonstrated1  by 
psychical  research  that  the  natural  order 
of  the  world  includes  telepathy,  and  the 
range  of  the  miraculous  has  been  corre- 
spondingly reduced  without  detriment  to 
the  argument  for  the  divinity  of  Christ, 
now  rested  on  less  precarious  ground. 

Under  such  conditions  as  we  have  re- 
viewed a  miracle  cannot  always  be  one 
and  the  same  thing.  Miracle  must  there- 
fore be  defined  as  being  what  our  whole 
course  of  thought  has  suggested  that  it  is : 
in  general,  an  elastic  word  ;  in  particular, 
a  provisional  word, — a  word  whose  applica- 
tion narrows  with  the  enlarging  range  of 
human  knowledge2  and  power  which  for 

1  In  the  opinion  of  such  psychologists  as  Pro- 
fessor William  James,  of  Harvard,  the  late  Pro- 
fessor Henry  Sidgwick,  of  Cambridge,  England, 
and  others  of  like  eminence. 

2  A   hint   of   this   was   given   by   Augustine : 
"  Portentum  non  fit  contra  naturam,  sed  contra 
quam  est  nota  natura."  —  De  Civitate  Dei. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion     81 

the  time  it  transcends ;  a  word  whose 
history,  in  its  record  of  ranges  already 
transcended,  prompts  expectation  that 
ranges  still  beyond  may  be  transcended 
in  the  illimitable  progress  of  mankind. 
Professor  Le  Conte  says  that  miracle  is 
"  an  occurrence  or  a  phenomenon  accord- 
ing to  a  law  higher  than  any  yet  known." 
Thus  it  is  a  case  of  human  ignorance,  not 
of  divine  interference. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  must  believe  that 
the  goal  of  progress  is  a  flying  goal ;  that 
human  attainment  can  never  reach  finality 
unless  men  cease  to  be.  And  so  all  widen- 
ing of  human  knowledge  and  power  must 
ever  disclose  further  limitations  to  be 
transcended.  There  will  always  be  a 
Beyond,  in  which  dwells  the  secret  of  laws 
still  undiscovered,  that  underlie  mysteries 
unrevealed  and  marvels  unexplained. 
This  will  have  to  be  admitted,  especially, 
by  those  to  whom  the  marvellous  is  synony- 


82     Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

mous  with  the  incredible.  We  have  not 
been  able  to  eviscerate  even  these  prosaic 
and  matter-of-fact  modern  times  of  marvels 
whose  secret  lies  in  the  yet  uncatalogued 
or  indefinable  powers  of  the  mysterious 
agent  that  we  name  life:  witness  many 
well  verified  facts  recorded  by  the  Society 
for  Psychical  Research.1  How,  then,  is  it 
consistent  to  affirm  that  no  such  marvels 
in  ancient  records  are  historical  realities  ? 
Nay,  may  it  not  be  true  that  the  ancient 
days  of  seers  and  prophets,  the  days  of 
Jesus,  days  of  the  sublime  strivings  of 
great  and  lonely  souls  for  closer  converse 
with  the  Infinite  Spirit  behind  his  mask  of 
Nature,  offered  better  conditions  for  mar- 
vellous experiences  and  deeds  than  these 
days  of  scientific  laboratories  and  factories, 

and  world-markets  and  world-politics? 

-i 

1  Consult  the  late  F.  W.  H.  Myers's  remark- 
able volumes  on  Human  Personality  and  Survi- 
val after  Death  (Longmans,  Green  &  Co) . 


V 


SYNOPSIS.  —  Biblical  miracles  the  effluence  of 
extraordinary  lives.  —  Life  the  world's  magician  and 
miracle  worker;  its  miracles  now  termed  prodi- 
gies. —  Miracle  the  natural  product  of  an  extraordi- 
nary endowment  of  life.  —  Life  the  ultimate 
reality.  —  What  any  man  can  achieve  is  condi- 
tioned by  the  psychical  quality  of  his  life.  —  Noth- 
ing more  natural,  more  supernatural,  than  life. — 
The  derived  life  of  the  world  filial  to  the  self-exist- 
ent life  of  God,  "  begotten,  not  made."  —  Miracle, 
as  the  product  of  life,  the  work  of  God. 

JE  it  noted,  now,  that  the  mar-  | 
vellous  phenomena  of  the  Bibli- 
cal record,  whatever  else  be 
thought  of  them,  are,  even  to  a  superficial 
view,  the  extraordinary  effluence  of  ex- 
traordinary lives.  Here  at  length  we  gain 
a  clearer  conception  of  miracle.  Life  is  the 
world's  great  magician,  —  life,  so  familiar, 


86    Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

yet  so  mysterious ;  so  commonplace,  yet  so 
transcendent  No  miracle  is  more  mar- 
vellous than  its  doings  witnessed  in  the 
biological  laboratory,  or  more  inexplicable 
than  its  transformation  of  dead  matter  into 
living  flesh,  its  development  of  a  Shake- 
speare from  a  microscopic  bit  of  proto- 
plasm. But  its  mysterious  processes  are 
too  common  for  general  marvel ;  we  mar- 

\j _yel    only   at  the   uncommon.      The    boy 

Zerah  Colburn  in  half  a  minute  solved  the 
problem,  "How  many  seconds  since  the 
beginning  of  the  Christian  era  ? "  We 
prefer  to  call  this  a  prodigy  rather  than  a 
miracle,  —  a  distinction  more  verbal  than 
real;  and  we  fancy  we  have  explained  it 
when  we  say  that  such  arithmetical  power 
was  a  peculiar  endowment  of  his  mental 
life.  Now  all  of  the  inexplicable,  inimit- 
able reality  that  at  any  time  has  to  be  left 
by  the  baffled  intellect  as  an  unsolved 
wonder  under  the  name  of  miracle  is  just 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion     87 

that,  —  the  natural  product  of  an  extraordi- 
nary endowment  of  life.  More  of  its  mar- 
vellous capability  is  latent  in  common 
men,  in  the  subconscious  depths  of  being, 
than  has  ever  yet  flashed  forth  in  the 
career  of  uncommon  men.  Some  scien- 
tists say  that  it  depends  on  chemical  and 
physical  forces.  It  indeed  uses  these  to 
build  the  various  bodies  it  inhabits,  but 
again  it  leaves  these  to  destroy  those  bod- -.^ 
ies  when  it  quits  them.  The  most  con-  \ 
stant  and  ubiquitous  phenomenon  in  the 
world,  the  ultimate  reality  in  the  universe, 
is  life,  revealing  its  presence  in  innumer- 
able modes  of  activity,  from  the  dance  of 
atoms  in  the  rock  to  the  philosophizing  of 
the  sage  and  the  aspirations  of  the  saint, 
—  the  creator  of  Nature,  the  administra- 
tor of  the  regular  processes  we  call  the 
laws  of  Nature,  the  author  of  the  wonders 
men  call  miraculous  because  they  are 
uncommon  and  ill  understood. 


88     Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

The  works  of  which  any  man  is  natu- 
rally capable  are  conditioned  by  the  psychi- 
cal quality  of  his  life,  and  its  power  to  use 
the  forces  of  Nature.  Through  differences 
of  vital  endowment  some  can  use  color, 
as  wonderful  painters,  and  others  employ 
sound,  as  wonderful  musicians,  in  ways  im- 
possible to  those  otherwise  endowed.  So 
"  a  poet  is  born,  not  made."  So  persons  of 
feeble  frame,  stimulated  by  disease  or 
frenzied  by  passion,  have  put  forth  preter- 

j^\natural  and  prodigious  muscular  strength. 
By  what  we  call  "  clairvoyant "  power  life 
calls  up  in  intelligent  perception  things 
going  on  far  beyond  ocular  vision.  By 
what  we  call  "  telepathic "  power  life 
communicates  intelligence  with  life  sepa- 
rated by  miles  of  space.  Such  are  some  of 
the  powers  that  have  been  discovered,  and 
fully  attested,  but  not  explained,  as  be- 

N  longing  to  the  world's  master  magician, 
^  Life.  And  when  the  poet  asks,  — 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion     89 

"  Ah,  what  will  our  children  be, 
The   men  of  a  hundred   thousand,   a   million 
summers  away?" 

we  can  only  answer  with  the  Apostle :  "  It 
doth  not  yet  appear  what  we  shall  be." 
But  we  cannot  deem  it  likely  that  the 
powers  of  life, 

"  Deep  seated  in  our  mystic  frame," 

and  giving  forth  such  flashes  of  their  in- 
herent virtue,  have  already  reached  their 
ultimate  development. 

We  look  with  wonder  and  awe  into  the 
secret  shrine  of  life,  where  two  scarcely 
visible  cells  unite  to  form  the  human  being 
whose  thought  shall  arrange  the  starry 
heavens  in  majestic  order,  and  harness  the 
titanic  energies  of  Nature  for  the  world's 
work.  There  we  behold  the  real  super- 
natural. (Nothing  is  more  natural  than 
life,  and  nothing  also  more  supernat- 
ural.} Biology  studies  all  the  various  forms 
that  the  world  shows  of  it,  and  affirms 


90    Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

that  life,  though  multiform,  is  one. 
This  embryology  attests,  showing  that 
the  whole  ascent  of  life  through  diverse 
forms  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest,  dur- 
ing the  millions  of  years  since  life  first 
manifested  its  presence  on  this  globe,  is 
recapitulated  in  the  stages  of  growth 
through  which  the  human  being  passes  in 
the  few  months  before  its  birth.  And  phi- 
losophy, which  does  not  seek  the  living 
among  the  dead,  affirms,  omne  vivum 
ex  vivo.  The  varied  but  unitary  life  of  the 
world  is  the  stream  of  an  exhaustless 
spring.  It  is  filial  to  the  life  of  God,  the 
Father  Almighty.  What  the  ancient 
creed  affirmed  of  the  Christ  as  the  Son  of 
God  —  whom  his  beloved  disciple  recog- 
nized as  "  the  eternal  life  which  was  with 
the  Father  and  was  manifested  unto  us * "  — 
may  be  truly  affirmed  of  the  mysterious  real- 
ity that  is  known  as  life :  "  Begotten  not 
1  i  John  i.  2. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion     91 

made ;  being  of  one  substance  with  the 
Father ;  through  whom  [or  which]  all 
things  were  made/'  Looking  from  the 
derived  and  finite  life  of  the  world,  visible 
only  in  the  signs  of  its  presence,  but  in  its 
reality  no  more  visible  than  him  "  whom 
no  man  hath  seen,  nor  can  see/'  up  to  the 
life  underived,  aboriginal,  infinite,  we  rec- 
ognize God  and  Life  as  terms  of  identical 
significance.  How  superficial  the  notion 
of  miracles  as  "  the  personal  intervention 
of  God  into  the  chain  of  cause  and  effect," 
in  which  he  is  the  constant  vital  element. 
If  an  event  deemed  miraculous  is  ever  as- 
cribed, as  of  old,  to  "  the  finger  of  God,"  the 
reality  behind  the  phenomenon  is  simply  a 
higher  or  a  stronger  power  of  life  than  is 
recognized  in  an  event  of  a  common  type — 
life  that  is  one  with  the  infinite  and  uni- 
versal Life, 

"  Life  that  in  me  has  rest, 
As  I,  undying  Life,  have  power  in  Thee," 


VI 


VI 


SYNOPSIS.  —  The  question,  both  old  and  new, 
now  confronting  theologians.  —  Their  recent  retreat 
upon  the  minimum  of  miracle.  —  The  present  con- 
flict of  opinion  in  the  Church.  —  Its  turning-point 
reached  in  the  antipodal  turn-about  in  the  treat- 
ment of  miracles  from  the  old  to  the  new  apolo- 
getics. —  Revision  of  the  traditional  idea  of  the 
supernatural  required  for  theological  readjustment. 


present  line  of  thought  has 
now  reached  the  point  where 
an  important  question  confronts 
us,  —  a  question  not  wholly  new.  Within 
the  memory  of  living  men  theologians 
have  been  compelled  to  ask  themselves: 
What  if  the  geologists  should  establish 
facts  that  contradict  our  Biblically  de- 
rived doctrine  that  the  universe  was  made 
in  a  week?  Again  have  they  been  con- 
strained to  put  to  themselves  the  question  : 
95 


96    Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

What  if  the  evolutionists  should  supersede 
our  doctrine  that  the  creation  is  the 
immediate  product  of  successive  fiats  of 
the  Creator  by  showing  that  it  came 
gradually  into  existence  through  the  pro- 
gressive operation  of  forces  immanent  in 
the  cosmos  ?  Still  again  have  they  had  to 
face  the  question :  What  if  modern  criti- 
cism by  the  discovery  of  demonstrable 
errors  in  the  Sacred  Writings  should  fault 
our  doctrine  that,  as  the  Word  of  God, 
the  Bible  is  free  from  all  and  every 
error?  In  every  instance  the  dreaded 
concession,  when  found  at  length  to  be 
enforced  by  modern  learning,  has  been 
found  to  bring,  not  the  loss  that  had 
been  apprehended,  but  clear  gain  to  the 
intellectual  interests  of  religion.  Now  it 
is  this  same  sort  of  question  which  returns 
with  the  uncertainties  and  difficulties 
widely  felt  in  the  Church  to  be  gather- 
ing over  its  hitherto  unvexed  belief  in 


Miracles  and  Supernatur 


miracles  as  signs  of  a  divine  activity  more 
immediate  than  it  has  recognized  in  the 
regular  processes  of  Nature. 

The  majority  of  uneducated  Christians 
still  hold,  as  formerly  in  each  of  the 
points  just  mentioned,  to  the  traditional 
view.  Miracle  as  a  divine  intervention 
in  the  natural  order,  a  more  close  and 
direct  divine  contact  with  the  course  of 
things  than  is  the  case  in  ordinary  expe- 
rience, they  regard  as  the  inseparable  and 
necessary  concomitant  and  proof  of  a 
divine  Revelation.  To  deny  miracles, 
thus  understood,  is  censured  as  equiva- 
lent to  denial  of  the  reality  of  the  Reve- 
lation. But  it  is  rather  surprising,  because 
it  is  rare,  to  find  a  man  of  such  note  in 
literature  as  Dr.  W.  Robertson  Nicoll 
affirming1  that  one  cannot  be  a  Christian 

1  "  The  Church  asks,  and  it  is  entitled  to  ask 
the  critic  :  Do  you  believe  in  the  Incarnation 
and  Resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ  ?  .  .  .     If  he 
H 


98     Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

without  believing  at  least  two  miracles, 
the  virgin  birth  and  the  physical  resur- 
rection of  the  Christ.  Without  comment 


replies  in  the  negative,  he  has  missed  the  way, 
and  has  put  himself  outside  of  the  Church  of 
Christ."  —  The  Church's  One  Foundation,  p.  4. 
[Note  that  "  Incarnation  "  and  "  Resurrection  " 
are  terms  which  Dr.  Nicoll  construes  as  de- 
noting physical  miracles.] 

What  Dr.  Nicoll  here  means  by  "  outside  of 
the  Church  "  he  indicates  by  saying  elsewhere, 
that  philosophers  who  reckon  goodness  as  every- 
thing, and  miracles  as  impossible,  "are  not 
Christians"  (op.  cit.,  p.  10). 

This  conditioning  of  Christian  character  upon 
an  intellectual  judgment  concerning  the  reality 
of  remote  occurrences  is  both  unbiblical  and 
unethical,  as  well  as  absurd  when  practically 
applied.  Some  years  since,  Dr.  E.  A.  Abbott, 
who  admits  no  miracle  in  the  life  of  Christ, 
published  a  book,  The  Spirit  on  the  Waters, 
in  which  he  inculcated  the  worship  of  Christ. 
Yet,  according  to  Dr.  Nicoll,  such  a  man  is 
no  Christian  ! 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion    99 

on  the  significance  of  this  retreat  upon 
the  minimum  of  miracle,  it  must  here 
be  noted  that  a  minority  of  the  Church, 
not  inferior  to  their  brethren  in  learning 
and  piety,  believe  that  there  are  no  tides 
in  God's  presence  in  Nature,  that  his  con- 
tact with  it  is  always  of  the  closest:  — 

"  Closer  is  he  than  breathing,  and  nearer  than 
hands  or  feet." 

All  natural  operations  are  to  them  divine 
operations.  "  Nature,"  said  Dr.  Martineau, 
"is  God's  mask,  not  his  competitor." 
While  his  agency  in  Nature  may  be  recog- 
nized at  one  time  more  than  at  another, 
it  exists  at  any  time  fully  as  much  as  at 
any  other.  In  the  interest  of  this  funda- 
mental truth  of  religion  they  affirm  that 
miracles  in  the  traditional  sense  of  the 
word,  and  in  their  traditional  limitation 
to  the  small  measure  of  time  and  space 
covered  by  Biblical  narratives,  never 
occurred.  Events  reputed  miraculous  have 


100  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

indeed  occurred,  but  simply  as  unusual,  in- 
explicable phenomena  in  the  natural  order 
of  things,  the  natural  products  of  excep- 
tionally endowed  life,  and,  whether  in 
ancient  time  or  modern,  the  same  sort 
of  thing  the  world  over.  To  the  argu- 
ment that  this  involves  denial  of  a  super- 
natural Revelation  they  reply  that  it  is 
mere  reasoning  in  a  circle.  For  if  one 
begs  the  question  at  the  outset  by  defin- 
ing supernatural  Revelation  as  revelation 
necessarily  evidenced  by  miraculous  divine 
intervention,  then,  of  course,  denial  of 
this  is  denial  of  that,  and  how  is  the 
argument  advanced?  But,  besides  this, 
the  question-begging  definition  is  a  falla- 
cious confusing  of  the  contents  of  the 
Revelation  with  its  concomitants,  and  of 
its  essentially  spiritual  character  with 
phenomena  in  the  sphere  of  the  senses. 

The  turning-point  in  this  argument  be- 
tween the  two  parties  in  the  Church  has 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion  101 

been  reached  in  the  antipodal  change, 
already  referred  to,  from  the  old  to  the 
new  apologetics,  —  a  change  whose  inevi- 
table consequences  do  not  yet  seem  to 
be  clearly  discerned  by  either  party  in  the 
discussion.  The  contention  that  denial 
of  miracles  as  traditionally  understood 
carries  denial  of  supernatural  Revelation 
has  been  virtually  set  aside,  with  its  ques- 
tion-begging definition  and  circular  reason- 
ing, by  the  apologetics  now  current  among 
believers  in  at  least  a  minimum  of  miracle 
in  the  traditional  sense  of  the  word,  —  es- 
pecially in  the  two  chief  miracles  of  the 
virgin  birth  and  the  physical  resurrection 
of  Jesus.  As  an  eminent  representative 
of  these  the  late  Dr.  A.  B.  Bruce  may  be 
cited.  These  adduce  "the  moral  miracle," 
the  sinlessness  of  Jesus,  as  evidential  for 
the  reality  of  the  physical  miracles  as  its 
"  congruous  accompaniments."  "  If,"  says 
Dr.  Bruce,  "  we  receive  Him  as  the  great 


102  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

moral  miracle,  we  shall  receive  much  more 
for  His  sake."  1  But  what  a  turn-about 
of  the  traditional  argument  on  the  evi- 
dences! The  older  apologetes  argued: 
This  crown  of  miraculous  power  bespeaks 
the  royal  dignity  of  the  wearer.  The 
modern  apologete  reasons:  This  royal 
character  must  have  a  crown  of  miracu- 
lous power  corresponding  with  his  moral 
worth.  In  this  antipodal  reverse  of  Chris- 
tian thought  it  is  quite  plain  that  for 
evidential  purposes  the  miracle  is  stripped 
of  its  ancient  value.  And  it  has  already 
been  observed  that  modern  knowledge  has 
now  transferred  many  of  the  Biblical 
miracles  to  the  new  rooms  discovered  for 
them  in  the  natural  order  of  things.  It 
is  not  premature,  therefore,  for  leaders 
of  Christian  thought  to  put  once  more  to 
themselves  the  question,  constantly  recur- 

1  The  Miraculous  Element  in  the  Gospels,  p. 
353- 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion  103 

ring  as  learning  advances :  What  theo- 
logical readjustment  should  we  have  to 
make,  if  obliged  to  concede  that  the  an- 
cient belief  in  miracle  is  not  inseparable 
from  belief  in  a  supernatural  Revelation, 
not  indispensable  to  belief  therein  ?  What 
modified  conception  must  we  form,  if  con- 
strained to  admit  that  the  living  God, 
ever  immanent  in  Nature,  intervenes  in 
Nature  no  more  at  one  time  than  an- 
other ?  What,  indeed,  but  a  revised  and 
true  in  place  of  a  mistaken  conception 
of  the  term  Supernatural? 


VII 


VII 

SYNOPSIS.  —  Account  to  be  made  of  the  law  of 
atrophy  through  disuse.  —  The  virgin  birth  and  the 
corporeal  resurrection  of  Jesus,  the  two  miracles 
now  insisted  on  as  the  irreducible  minimum,  affected 
by  this  law.  —  The  vital  truths  of  the  incarnation 
and  immortality  independent  of  these  miracles. — 
These  truths  now  placed  on  higher  ground  in  a 
truer  conception  of  the  supernatural.  —  The  true 
supernatural  is.  the  spiritual,  not  the  miraculous.  — 
Scepticism  bred  from  the  contrary  view. — The 
miracle  narratives,  while  less  evidential  for  religion, 
not  unimportant  for  history.  —  Psychical  research 
a  needful  auxiliary  for  the  scientific  critic  of  these. 

the  true  conception  of  the  su- 
pernatural we  shall  presently 
come.  But  we  cannot  proceed 
without  briefly  reminding  ourselves  of  the 
certain  consequences  of  this  now  far  ad- 
vanced dropping  of  miracles  by  modern 
apologetics  from  their  ancient  use  as  evi- 
dences of  a  supernatural  Revelation.  We 
107 


108  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

are  not  ignorant  of  the  law,  which  holds 
throughout  the  material,  the  mental,  and 
the  moral  realms,  that  disuse  tends  to 
atrophy  and  extinction.  Disused  organs 
cease  to  exist,  as  in  the  eyeless  cave-fish. 
For  centuries  the  story  of  the  miraculous 
birth  of  Jesus  was  serviceable  for  con- 
firmation of  his  claim  to  be  the  Son  of 
God.  In  the  address  of  the  angel  of  the 
annunciation  to  Mary  that  claim  is  ex- 
pressly rested  on  the  miraculous  concep- 
tion of  "the  holy  thing."1  But  as  ethical 
enlightenment  grows,  the  conviction  grows 
that,  whether  the  physiological  ground  of 
that  claim  be  tenable  or  not,  the  ethical 
ground  of  it  is  essentially  higher.  Father 
and  son  even  in  human  relationships  are 
terms  of  more  than  physiological  import. 
It  is  matter  of  frequent  experience  that, 
where  the  ethical  character  of  such  re- 
lationship is  lacking,  the  physiological 
1  Luke  i.  35. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion  109 

counts  for  nothing.  Moreover,  the  divine 
sonship  of  Jesus  in  a  purely  ethical  view 
rests  on  ground  not  only  higher  but  incon- 
testable. And  so  in  our  time  theologians 
prefer  to  rest  it  on  foundations  that  cannot 
be  shaken,  on  his  moral  oneness  with 
God,  the  divineness  of  his  spirit,  the  ideal 
perfectness  of  his  life.  The  strength  of 
this  position  being  realized,  the  world  be- 
gins to  hear  from  Christian  thinkers  the 
innovating  affirmation  that  belief  of  the 
miraculous  birth  can  no  longer  be  deemed 
essential  to  Christianity ;  else  it  would  not 
have  been  left  unmentioned  in  two  of  the 
four  Gospels,  and  in  every  extant  Apos- 
tolic letter.  And  now  we  hear  theolo- 
gians saying  :  "  I  accept  it,  but  I  place  it 
no  more  among  the  evidences  of  Chris- 
tianity. I  defend  it,  but  cannot  employ 
it  in  the  defence  of  supernatural  Revela- 
tion." Such  a  stage  of  thought  is  only 
transitional.  An  antiquated  argument 


110  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

does  not  long  survive  in  the  world  of 
thought.1  Military  weapons  that  have 
become  unserviceable  soon  find  their  way 
either  to  the  museum  or  the  foundry.  It 

1  To  what  extent  the  law  of  atrophy  has  be- 
gun to  work  upon  the  doctrine  of  the  virgin 
birth  appears  in  the  recent  utterance  of  so  emi- 
nent an  evangelical  scholar  as  Dr.  R.  F.  Horton, 
of  London.  The  following  report  of  his  re- 
marks in  a  Christmas  sermon  in  1901  is  taken 
from  the  Christian  World,  London.  "We 
could  not  imagine  Paul,  Peter,  and  John  all 
ignoring  something  essential  to  the  Gospel  they 
preached.  Strictly  speaking,  this  narrative  in 
Matthew  and  Luke  was  one  of  the  latest  touches 
in  the  Gospel,  belonging  to  a  period  forty  or 
fifty  years  after  the  Lord  had  passed  away,  when 
men  had  begun  to  realize  what  he  was  —  the 
Son  of  God  —  and  tried  to  express  their  con- 
viction in  this  form  or  that."  The  implication 
here  is  unmistakable,  that,  in  Dr.  Horton's  view, 
subjective  considerations  in  the  minds  of  pious 
believers,  rather  than  objective  fact,  form  the 
basis  of  the  story. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion  111 

is  shortsighted  not  to  foresee  the  inevi- 
table effect  on  our  theological  material  of 
the  law  of  atrophy  through  disuse.  The 
case  of  the  miracle  is  the  case  of  a  pillar 
originally  put  in  for  the  support  of  an 
ancient  roof.  When  the  roof  has  a  mod- 
ern truss  put  beneath  it  springing  from 
wall  to  wall,  the  pillar  becomes  an  ob- 
stacle, and  is  removed. 

But  as  in  such  a  case  the  roof,  other- 
wise supported,  does  not  fall  in  when  the 
pillar  is  removed,  so  neither  is  the  central 
Christian  truth  of  the  incarnation  imperilled 
by  any  weakening  or  vanishing  of  belief 
in  the  doctrine  of  the  virgin  birth.  In 
a  discussion  of  the  subject  in  Convocation 
at  York,  England,  while  these  pages 
were  being  written,  the  Dean  of  Ripon 
(Dr.  Boyd  Carpenter)  urged  that  it  must 
be  borne  in  mind  that  the  incarnation 
and  the  virgin  birth  were  two  different 
things,  and  that  some  who  found  diffi- 


112  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

culty  in  the  latter  fully  accepted  the 
former.  In  a  recent  sermon  Dr.  Briggs 
insists  likewise  upon  this :  "  The  virgin 
birth  is  only  one  of  many  statements  of 
the  mode  of  incarnation.  .  .  .  The  doc- 
trine of  the  incarnation  does  not  depend 
upon  the  virgin  birth.  ...  It  is  only  a 
minor  matter  connected  with  the  incar- 
nation, and  should  have  a  subordinate 
place  in  the  doctrine.  ...  At  the  same 
time  the  virgin  birth  is  a  New  Testa- 
ment doctrine,  and  we  must  give  it  its 
proper  place  and  importance.  .  .  .  The 
favorite  idea  of  the  incarnation  among 
the  people  has  ever  been  the  simpler 
one  of  the  virgin  birth,  as  in  the  Ave 
Maria.  The  theologians  have  ever  pre- 
ferred the  more  profound  doctrine  of  the 
Hymn  of  the  Logos  [John  i.  i-iS]."1 

1  See  the  Sermon  on  "  Born  of  a  Virgin," 
in  the  volume  on  The  Incarnation  of  Our 
Lord. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion  113 

Nay,  it  may  even  be  found  that  the 
weakening  of  belief  in  the  incarnation 
as  an  isolated  and  miraculous  event  may 
tend  to  promote  a  profounder  conception 
of  it,  that  brings  the  divine  and  the  hu- 
man into  touch  and  union  at  all  points 
instead  of  in  one  point.1 

1  "  Christian  thought  has  not  erred  by  assert- 
ing too  much  concerning  the  incarnation  of 
God,  but,  on  the  contrary,  too  little.  .  .  . 
If  ever  overblown  by  blasts  of  denial,  it  is  for 
wanting  breadth  of  base.  .  .  .  Men  have  dis- 
believed the  incarnation,  because  told  that  all 
there  was  of  it  was  in  Christ ;  and  they  reject 
what  is  presented  as  exceptional  to  the  gen- 
eral way  of  God.  They  must  be  told  to  be- 
lieve more;  that  the  age-long  way  of  God  is 
in  a  perpetually  increasing  incarnation  of  life, 
whose  climax  and  crown  is  the  divine  fulness 
of  life  in  Christ."  —  From  a  discourse  by  the 
present  writer  on  "  Life  and  its  Incarnations," 
in  the  volume,  New  Points  to  Old  Texts. 
(James  Clarke  &  Co.,  London.  Thomas  Whit- 
taker,  New  York,  1889.) 
i 


114  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

A  similar  change  of  thought,  less  re- 
marked than  its  significance  deserves,  is 
concerned  with  that  other  great  miracle, 
the  corporeal  resurrection  of  Jesus,  which 
such  writers  as  Dr.  Nicoll  couple  with 
that  of  his  virgin  birth  as  the  irreduci- 
ble minimum  of  miracle,  belief  in  which 
is  essential  to  Christian  discipleship.1 
For  many  centuries  the  resurrection  story 
in  the  Gospels  has  served  as  the  conclu- 
sive proof  both  of  the  divine  sonship 
of  Jesus,2  and  of  our  own  resurrection 
to  immortality.3  In  the  churches  it  is 
still  popularly  regarded  as  the  supreme, 
sufficient,  and  indispensable  fact  required 
for  the  basis  of  faith.  But  in  many  a 
Christian  mind  the  thought  has  dawned, 
that  a  single  fact  cannot  give  adequate 
ground  for  the  general  inference  of  a 
universal  principle ;  that  a  remote  his- 

1  See  page  97  and  Note.        2  Romans,  i.  4. 
8  i  Corinthians,  xv.  16-23. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion  115 

torical  fact,  however  strongly  attested, 
can  evince  only  what  has  taken  place  in 
a  given  case,  not  what  will  or  must  occur 
in  other  cases ;  while  it  is  also  inevitably 
more  or  less  pursued  by  critical  doubt  of 
the  attestations  supporting  it. 

This  rising  tide  of  reflection  has  com- 
pelled resort  to  higher  ground,  to  the 
inward  evidences  in  the  nature  of  mind 
that  are  more  secure  from  the  doubt  to 
which  all  that  is  merely  external  and 
historical  is  exposed.  A  clear  distinction 
has  been  discerned  between  the  real 
resurrection  of  Jesus  —  his  rising  from 
the  mortal  state  into  the  immortal,  and 
his  phenomenal  resurrection — the  mani- 
festations of  his  change  that  are  related 
as  having  been  objectively  witnessed. 
What  took  place  in  the  invisible  world 
—  his  real  resurrection  —  is  now  more 
emphasized  by  Christian  thinkers  than 
the  phenomenal  resurrection  in  the  visi- 


116  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

ble  world.  So  conservatively  orthodox 
a  writer  as  Dr.  G.  D.  Boardman  goes 
so  far  as  to  say:  "After  all,  the  real 
question  in  the  matter  of  his  resurrection 
is  not,  '  Did  Christ's  body  rise  ? '  That 
is  but  a  subordinate,  incidental  issue." 
The  real  question,  as  Dr.  Boardman  ad- 
mits, is,  "  Whether  Jesus  Christ  himself 
is  risen,  and  is  alive  to-day."  1  The  main 
stress  of  Christian  thought  to-day  is  not 
laid,  as  formerly,  on  the  phenomena  re- 
corded in  the  story  of  the  resurrection, 
but  on  the  psychological,  moral,  and 
rational  evidences  of  a  resurrection  to 
immortality  that  until  recent  times  were 
comparatively  disregarded.2  Meanwhile 

1  Our  Risen  King's  Forty  Days,  1902. 

2  In  strong  contrast  with  this  are  the  reac- 
tionary protests  of  Dr.  W.  R.  Nicoll :  "  To  talk 
of  the  resurrection  of  the  spirit  is  preposter- 
ous.    The   spirit  does  not  die,  and   therefore 
cannot    rise.  ,  The   one    resurrection    of 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion  117 

the  vindication  of  the  reality  of  the  phe- 
nomena related  of  the  risen  Jesus,  includ- 
ing his  bodily  ascension,  though  not  a 

which  the  New  Testament  knows,  the  one  resur- 
rection which  allows  to  language  any  meaning, 
is  the  resurrection  of  the  body,  the  resurrec- 
tion which  leaves  the  grave  empty "  (op.  cit. 

P-  134)- 

It  should  be  noted  here  that  Jesus'  argu- 
ment with  the  Sadducees  on  the  resurrection 
(Luke  xx.  37,  38)  logically  proceeds  on  the  as- 
sumption that  living  after  death  and  rising  after 
death  are  convertible  terms.  Also,  that  the 
contrast  involved  in  the  idea  of  the  resurrection 
(the  anastasis,  or  rising  up)  is  a  contrast  not 
between  the  grave  and  the  sky,  but  between 
the  lower  life  of  mortals  and  the  higher  life 
immortal." 

For  an  extended  exhibition  of  this  line  of 
evidence  see  "  The  Assurance  of  Immortality," 
and  "The  Present  Pledge  of  Life  to  Come" 
(in  two  volumes  of  discourses  by  the  present 
writer),  London,  James  Clarke  &  Co.  New 
York,  Thomas  Whittaker,  1888  and  1889. 


118  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

matter  of  indifference  to  many  of  those 
who  have  found  the  higher  grounds  of 
faith,  has  become  to  them  of  subordinate 
importance. 

It  is  well  for  Christian  faith  that  its 
supersensuous  and  impregnable  grounds 
have  been  occupied.  It  is  certain  that 
ancient  records  of  external  phenomena 
cannot  in  future  constitute,  as  heretofore, 
the  stronghold  of  faith.  But  it  is  by  no 
means  yet  certain  that  they  have  lost 
serviceableness  as,  at  least,  outworks  of 
the  stronghold.  While  the  doctrine  of 
the  virgin  birth  seems  to  be  threatened 
by  atrophy,  the  doctrine  of  the  bodily 
resurrection,  though  retired  from  primary 
to  secondary  rank,  seems  to  be  waiting 
rather  for  clarification  by  further  knowl- 
edge. 

Something  of  an  objective  nature  cer- 
tainly lies  at  its  basis ;  something  of  an 
external  sort,  not  the  product  of  mere  im- 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion  119 

agination,  took  place.  To  the  fact  thus 
indefinitely  stated,  that  hallowing  of  Sun- 
day as  a  day  of  sacred  and  joyful  observ- 
ance which  is  coeval  with  the  earliest 
traditions,  and  antedates  all  records,  is  an 
attestation  as  significant  as  any  monu- 
mental marble.  No  hallucination  theory, 
no  gradual  rise  and  growth  of  hope  in  the 
minds  of  a  reflective  few,  can  account  for 
that  solid  primeval  monument.  But  what 
occurred,  the  reality  in  distinctness  from 
any  legendary  accretions,  we  shall  be  bet- 
ter able  to  conclude,  when  the  truth  shall 
have  been  threshed  out  concerning  the 
reality,  at  present  strongly  attested,  and 
as  strongly  controverted,  of  certain  ex- 
traordinary but  occult  psychical  powers.1 

1  Could  it  have  been  only  an  apparition  ?  The 
"  census  of  hallucinations  "  conducted  some  ten 
years  since  by  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research 
evinced  the  reality  of  veridical  apparitions  of 
deceased  persons  at  or  near  the  time  of  their 


120  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

A  point  of  high  significance  for  those 
who  would  cultivate  a  religious  faith  not 
liable  to  be  affected  by  changes  of  intel- 
lectual outlook  or  insight  is,  that  this 
lower  valuation  of  miracle  observable 
among  Christian  thinkers  has  not  been 
reached  through  breaches  made  by  scep- 

death,  showing  the  number  of  verified  cases  to 
be  so  large  as  to  exclude  the  supposition  of 
chance  hallucination  (see  Proceedings,  August, 
1894).  Or  could  it  have  been  a  material  body 
suddenly  becoming  visible  in  a  closed  room,  as 
narrated  by  Luke  and  John?  First-class  evi- 
dence, if  there  can  be  any  such  for  such  occur- 
rences, has  been  exhibited  for  such  phenomena 
as  the  passage  of  solid  substances  through  in- 
tervening doors  and  walls  —  easy  enough,  say 
mathematicians,  for  a  being  familiar  with  the 
"  fourth  dimension  "  —  and  of  the  levitation  of 
heavy  bodies  without  physical  support.  (See 
Proceedings,  January,  1894,  and  March,  1895.) 
As  to  such  things  scepticism  is  doubtless  in 
order,  but  dogmatic  contradiction  is  not.  Sub 
judicc  Us  cst. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion    121 

tical  doubts  of  the  reality  of  a  supernatural 
Revelation.  They  have,  of  course,  felt  the 
reasonableness  of  the  difficulties  with  which 
traditional  opinions  have  been  encumbered 
by  the  advance  of  knowledge.  But  so  far 
from  giving  way  thereupon  to  doubts  of 
the  reality  of  divine  Revelation,  they  have 
sought  and  found  less  assailable  defences 
for  their  faith  in  it  than  those  that  sufficed 
their  fathers.  And  their  satisfaction  there- 
with stands  in  no  sympathy  with  those  who 
hold  it  a  mark  of  enlightenment  to  assume 
with  Matthew  Arnold,  that  "miracles  do 
not  happen."  It  has  resulted  rather  from 
reaching  the  higher  grounds  of  religious 
thought,  on  which  supernatural  Revelation 
is  recognized  in  its  essential  character  as 
distinctively  moral  and  spiritual. 

The  true  supernatural  is  the  spiritual, 
not  the  miraculous,  a  higher  order  of 
Nature,  not  a  contradiction  of  Nature. 
The  Revelation  of  Jesus  was  altogether 


122  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

spiritual.  It  consisted  in  the  ideas  of  God 
which  he  communicated  by  his  ministry 
and  teaching,  by  his  character  and  life. 
But  this,  the  real  supernatural,  was  not 
obvious  as  such  to  his  contemporaries. 
They  looked  for  it  in  the  lower  region  of 
physical  effects.  And  here  the  Church 
also  in  its  embryonic  spiritual  life,  in  its 
proneness  to  externalize  religion  in  forms 
of  rite,  and  creed,  and  organization,  has 
thought  to  find  it  Jesus'  reproof,  "  Except 
ye  see  signs  and  wonders  ye  will  not  be- 
lieve," is  still  pertinent  to  those  who  will 
not  have  it  that  the  supernatural  Reve- 
lation—  spiritual  though  it  be  —  can  be 
recognized  or  believed  in  apart  from  an 
acknowledgment  of  attendant  miracles, 
wrought  in  physical  nature  by  an  interven- 
tion of  God.  Such  a  contention,  however, 
is  as  futile  and  desperate  as  was  John 
Wesley's  declaration,  "The  giving  up  of 
witchcraft  is  in  effect  the  giving  up  of  the 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion   123 

Bible."  Such  mischievous  fallacies  suc- 
ceed only  in  blinding  many  a  mind  to  the 
real  issue  which  the  moral  and  spiritual 
Revelation  of  Jesus  makes  with  men  of 
the  twentieth  century.  It  is  these  falla- 
cies, and  not  their  critics,  that  create  the 
most  of  scepticism.1 

1  Professor  Borden  P.  Bowne  has  thus  exhib- 
ited this  great  mistake  and  its  grievous  conse- 
quence :  — 

"  In  popular  thought,  religious  and  irreligious 
alike,  the  natural  is  supposed  to  be  something 
that  runs  itself  without  any  internal  guidance  or 
external  interference.  The  supernatural,  on  the 
other  hand,  if  there  be  any  such  thing,  is  not 
supposed  to  manifest  itself  through  the  natural, 
but  by  means  of  portents,  prodigies,  interposi- 
tions, departures  from,  or  infractions  of,  natural 
law  in  general.  The  realm  of  law  belongs  to 
the  natural,  and  the  natural  runs  itself.  Hence, 
if  we  are  to  find  anything  supernatural,  we  must 
look  for  it  in  the  abnormal,  the  chaotic,  the 
lawless,  or  that  which  defies  all  reduction  to 
order  that  may  be  depended  on.  This  notion 


124  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

But  while  the  question  whether  miracles 
are  credible  has  ceased  to  be  of  vital 
importance,  it  has  by  no  means  lost  all 
importance.  On  the  contrary,  so  long  as 
the  path  of  progress  is  guided  by  the 
lamp  of  experience,  so  long  will  it  be  of 
consequence  that  the  historical  record  of 
experience  be  found  trustworthy.  It  may 
suit  the  overweening  pride  which  defies 
both  the  past  and  the  present  to  say  with 
Bonaparte,  that  history  is  only  a  fable  that 
men  have  agreed  to  believe.  But  it  is  a 
human  interest,  and  a  satisfaction  of  nor- 
mal minds  to  establish,  so  far  as  reason 

underlies  the  traditional  debate  between  natural- 
ism and  supernaturalism.  .  .  .  This  unhappy 
misconception  of  the  relation  of  the  natural  to 
the  supernatural  has  practically  led  the  great 
body  of  uncritical  thinkers  into  the  grotesque 
inversion  of  all  reason  —  the  more  law  and 
order,  the  less  God."  —  Ziorfs  Herald,  August 

22,  IQOO. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion  125 

permits,  the  credibility  of  every  record 
ostensibly  historic.  To  discover  that  an- 
cient experiences,  once  supposed  to  be 
miraculous  raisings  from  real  death,  may 
reasonably  be  classed  with  well  attested 
experiences  of  to-day,  better  understood  as 
resuscitations  from  a  deathlike  trance, 
should  be  welcomed  by  unprejudiced  his- 
torical critics,  as  redeeming  portions  of 
the  ancient  record  from  mistaken  dispar- 
agement as  legendary.  That  further 
study  may  accredit  as  facts,  or  at  least  as 
founded  on  facts,  some  other  marvels  in 
that  record  cannot,  except  by  arrant  dog- 
matism, be  pronounced  improbable. 
Nevertheless,  it  cannot  be  expected  that 
the  legendary  element,  which  both  the 
Old  and  the  New  Testament  in  greater 
and  less  degree  exhibit,  can  ever  be  elimi- 
nated. Such  stories  as  that  of  the  origin 
of  languages  at  Babel,  and  that  of  the 
resurrection  of  ancient  saints  at  Jesus* 


126  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

resurrection  are  indubitable  cases  of  it. 
But  the  legendary  element,  though  perma- 
nent, is  at  present  undefined.  To  define 
it  is  the  problem  of  the  critical  student,  a 
problem  most  difficult  to  him  whose  judg- 
ment is  least  subjective ;  and  he  will  wel- 
come every  contribution  that  advancing 
knowledge  can  supply. 

Regarding  miracle  as  the  natural  prod- 
uct of  exceptionally  endowed  life,  there 
is  no  source  from  which  more  light  can  be 
shed  on  its  Biblical  record  than  in  those 
studies  of  the  exceptional  phenomena  and 
occult  powers  of  life  which  are  prosecuted 
by  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research, 
whose  results  are  recorded  in  its  published 
Proceedings.  For  those  familiar  with  this 
record  the  legendary  element  in  the  Bible 
tends  to  shrink  into  smaller  compass  than 
many  critics  assign  it.  In  the  interest 
both  of  the  Bible  and  of  science  it  is 
regrettable  that  the  results  of  these  re- 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion   127 

searches,  though  conducted  by  men  of 
high  eminence  in  the  scientific  world,  still 
encounter  the  same  hostile  scepticism 
even  from  some  Christian  believers  that 
Hume  directed  against  the  Biblical  mira- 
cles. Mr.  Gladstone  has  put  himself  on 
record  against  this  philistinism,  saying 
that  "  psychical  research  is  by  far  the  most 
important  work  that  is  being  done  in  the 
world."  Were  one  disposed  to  prophesy, 
very  reasonable  grounds  could  be  pro- 
duced for  the  prediction  that,  great  as 
was  the  advance  of  the  nineteenth  century 
in  physical  knowledge,  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury will  witness  an  advance  in  psychical 
knowledge  equally  great.  In  this  advance 
one  may  not  unreasonably  anticipate  that 
some,  at  least,  of  the  Biblical  miracles  may 
be  relieved  from  the  scepticism  that  now 
widely  discredits  them. 


VIII 


VIII 

SYNOPSIS.  —  The  cardinal  point  in  the  present 
discussion,  the  reality  not  of  miracles  but  of  the 
supernatural.  —  Fallacy  of  pointing  to  physical 
events  as  essential  characteristics  of  supernatural 
Revelation.  — The  character  of  a  revelation  deter- 
mined not  by  its  circumstances,  but  by  its  contents. 
—  Moral  nature  supernatural  to  physical.  —  Nature 
a  hierarchy  of  natures.  —  Supernatural  Religion  his- 
torically attested  by  the  moral  development  it  gen- 
erates. —  Transfer  of  its  distinctive  note  from  moral 
ideals  to  physical  marvels  a  costly  error. — Jesus' 
miracles  a  revelation,  of  a  type  common  with 
others  before  and  since.  —  The  unique  Revelation  of 
Jesus  was  in  the  higher  realm  of  divine  ideas  and 
ideals.  —  These,  while  unrealized  in  human  life,  still 
exhibit  the  fact  of  a  supernatural  Revelation.  —  The 
distinction  of  natural  and  supernatural  belongs  to 
the  period  of  moral  progress  up  to  the  spiritual 
maturity  of  man  in  the  image  of  God.  The  divine 
possibilities  of  humanity,  imaged  in  Jesus,  revealed 
as  our  inheritance  and  our  prize. 


132  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

T  remains   finally  to   emphasize 
the  point  of  cardinal  importance 

^ in  the  considerations  that  have 

been  presented.  This  is  not  the  reality  of 
miracles,  but  the  reality  of  the  supernat- 
ural, what  it  really  is,  as  distinct  from 
what  it  has  been  thought  to  be.  The 
advance  of  science  and  philosophy  has 
brought  to  the  front  this  question :  "  Have 
those  who  reject  the  claims  of  supernat- 
ural Religion  been  misinformed  as  to 
what  it  is  ?  Is  it,  as  they  have  been  told, 
dependent  for  its  attestation  on  signs  and 
wonders  occurring  in  the  sphere  of  the 
senses?  Does  it  require  acceptance  of 
these,  as  well  as  of  its  teachings?  Or  is  its 
characteristic  appeal  wholly  to  the  higher 
nature  of  man,  relying  for  its  attestation 
on  the  witness  borne  to  it  by  this,  rather 
than  by  extraordinary  phenomena  pre- 
sented to  the  senses  ?  There  is  at  present 
no  intellectual  interest  of  Christianity  more 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion   133 

urgent  than  this :  to  present  to  minds 
imbued  with  modern  learning  the  true 
conception  of  the  supernatural  and  of 
supernatural  Religion. 

Miracles,  legitimately  viewed  as  the  nat-  f 
ural  product  of  extraordinary  psychical 
power,  or,  to  phrase  it  otherwise,  of  an  ex- 
ceptional vital  endowment,  belong  not  to 
the  Hebrew  race  alone,  nor  did  they  cease 
when  the  last  survivor  of  the  Jewish  apos- 
tles of  Christianity  passed  away  at  the  end 
of  the  first  century.  This  traditional  opin- 
ion ought  by  this  time  to  have  been  en- 
tombed together  with  its  long  defunct 
relative,  which  represented  this  globe  as 
the  fixed  centre  of  the  revolving  heavens. 
Miracles  have  the  same  universality  as 
human  life.  Nor  will  their  record  be 
closed  till  the  evolution  of  life  is  complete. 
Animal  life,  advancing  through  geologic 
aeons  to  the  advent  of  man,  in  him 
reached  its  climax.  Spiritual  life,  appear- 


134  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

ing  in  him  as  a  new  bud  on  an  old  stock,  is 
evidently  far  from  its  climax  still.  To 
believe  in  miracles,  as  rightly  understood, 
is  to  believe  in  spirit  and  life,  and  in  fur- 
ther unfoldings  of  their  still  latent  powers. 
This,  however,  is  just  now  of  subordinate 
importance.  The  present  interest  of  chief 
moment  is  a  riddance  of  the  hoary  fallacy 
that  vitiates  the  current  idea  of  a  supernat- 
ural Revelation  by  looking  for  its  specific 
characteristics  to  the  physical  world.  By 
this  deplorable  fallacy  Christian  theology 
has  blinded  the  minds  of  many  scientific 
men  to  the  essential  claims  of  Christianity, 
with  immense  damage  in  the  arrested 
development  of  their  religious  nature 
\^  through  the  scepticism  inevitably  but 
W  needlessly  provoked  by  this  great  mistake. 
When  Elijah  proclaims  to  idolaters  that 
their  deity  is  no  God,  and,  as  we  read, 
corroborates  his  words  by  calling  down 
fire  from  heaven  to  consume  his  sacrifice, 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion   135 

it  is  reckoned  as  supernatural  Revelation. 
But  it  is  not  so  reckoned  when  the  sage  in 
the  book  of  Proverbs  proclaims  to  a  nation 
of  religious  formalists  the  moral  character 
of  God:  "To  do  righteousness  and  justice 
is  more  acceptable  to  the  LORD  than  sacri- 
fice." This  is  accounted  as  ethical  teach- 
ing, somewhat  in  advance  of  the  times. 
A  pagan  rather  than  a  Christian  way  of 
thinking  is  discoverable  here.  In  each 
of  the  cases  cited  the  specific  character  of 
supernatural  Revelation  is  equally  evident, 
—  the  disclosure  of  spiritual  truth  above 
the  natural  thought  of  the  natural  men  to 
whom  it  came.  The  character  of  any 
revelation  is  determined  by  the  character 
of  the  truth  made  known,  not  by  the  dra- 
pery of  circumstances  connected  with  the 
making  known.  Clothes  do  not  make  the 
man,  though  coarse  or  careless  people  may 
think  so.  What  belongs  to  the  moral  and 
spiritual  order  is  supernatural  to  what 


136  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

belongs    to    the    material    and    physical 
order. 

This  way  of  thinking  will  be  forced  on 
common  minds  by  thoughtful  observation 
of  common  things.  Animate  nature  of 
the  lowest  rank,  as  in  the  grass,  is  of  a 
higher  natural  order  than  inanimate  nature 
in  the  soil  the  grass  springs  from.  Sen- 
tient nature,  as  in  the  ox,  is  of  a  higher 
order  than  the  non-sentient  in  the  grass. 
Self-conscious  and  reflective  nature  in  the 
man  is  of  a  higher  order  than  the  selfless 
and  non-reflective  nature  in  his  beast  of 
burden.  In  the  composite  being  of  man 
all  these  orders  of  nature  coexist,  and  each 
higher  is  supernatural  to  the  nature  below 
it.  Nature,  the  comprehensive  term  for 
all  that  comes  into  being,  is  a  hierarchy 
of  natures,  rising  rank  above  rank  from 
the  lowest  to  the  highest.  The  highest 
nature  known  to  us,  supernatural  to  all 
below  it,  can  only  be  the  moral  nature, 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion   137 

whose  full  satisfaction  is  necessary  to  the 
highest  satisfaction  of  a  man,  and  in  whose 
complete  development  only  can  be  realized 
in  permanency  his  perfected  welfare  as  a 
social  being. 

Now  it  is  precisely  in  the  progress  of 
moral  development  that  supernatural  Re- 
ligion manifests  itself  as  a  reality.  Reli- 
gion, indeed,  is  as  natural  to  man  as  Art. 
But  there  is  religion  and  Religion,  as 
there  is  art  and  Art  —  the  sexual  religion 
of  the  primitive  Semites,  the  animistic  re- 
ligion of  China,  the  spiritual  Religion  that 
flowered  on  the  Mount  of  the  Beatitudes, 
embryonic  religion  and  Religion  adult; 
all,  indeed,  natural,  yet  of  lower  and  of 
higher  grade.  Doubtless,  Religion  of  what- 
ever grade  outranks  all  other  human  activi- 
ties by  its  distinctive  aspiration  to  transcend 
the  bounds  of  space  and  time  and  sense, 
and  to  link  the  individual  to  the  universal ; 
and  so  all  Religion  sounds,  feebly  or  dis- 


138  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

tinctly,  the  note  of  the  supernatural.  But 
this  is  the  resonant  note  of  the  spiritual 
Religion  which  unfolds  in  the  moral  prog- 
ress of  the  world.  As  moral  nature  is 
supernatural  to  the  psychical  and  the  phys- 
ical, so  is  its  consummate  bloom  of  spiritual 
Religion  to  be  ranked  as  such,  relatively  to 
the  religions  which  more  or  less  dimly  and 
blindly  are  yearning  and  groping  toward 
the  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land. 
Thus  defining  the  word  according  to  the 
nature  of  the  thing,  supernatural  Religion, 
with  its  corollary  of  supernatural  Revela- 
tion not  as  an  apparition  from  without, 
but  as  an  unfolding  from  within,  is  both  a 
fact  and  a  factor  in  the  development  of 
spiritual  man. 

The  term  supernatural  Religion  has 
been  rightly  applied  to  that  system  of 
religious  conceptions,  ideals,  and  motives, 
whose  effective  culture  of  the  moral  nature 
is  attested  historically  by  a  moral  develop- 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion   139 

ment  superior  to  the  product  of  any  other 
known  religion.  Whether  the  greatest 
saints  of  Christianity  are  all  of  them  whiter 
souls  than  any  that  can  be  found  among 
the  disciples  of  any  other  religion,  may 
be  matter  for  argument.  There  can  be 
no  gainsaying  the  fact  that,  of  great  and 
lowly  together,  no  other  religion  shows  so 
many  saints,  or  has  so  advanced  the  gen- 
eral moral  development  in  lands  where 
it  is  widely  followed.  But  its  essential 
character  has  been  obscured,  its  appeal 
to  man's  highest  nature  foiled,  and  its 
power  lamed  by  the  wretched  fallacy  that 
has  transferred  its  distinctive  note  of  the 
supernatural  from  its  divine  ideals  to  the 
physical  marvels  embedded  in  the  record 
of  its  original  promulgation,  even  con- 
ditioning its  validity  and  authority  upon 
their  reality.  Such  is  the  false  issue 
which,  to  the  discredit  of  Christianity, 
theology  has  presented  to  science.  Such 


140  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

is  the  confusion  of  ideas  that  in  the  light 
of  modern  knowledge  inevitably  blocks 
the  way  to  a  reasonable  religious  faith 
in  multitudes  of  minds  thereby  offended. 
From  this  costly  error  Christian  theology 
at  length  shows  signs  that  it  is  about  to 
extricate  itself.1 

As  to  the  Christian  miracles,  there  can 
be  no  reasonable  doubt  that  "  mighty 
works,"  deemed  by  many  of  his  con- 
temporaries superhuman,  were  wrought 
by  Jesus.  These,  whatever  they  were, 
must  be  regarded  as  the  natural  effluence 
of  a  transcendently  endowed  life.  Taking 
place  in  the  sphere  of  the  senses,  they 
were  a  revelation  of  the  type  seen  before 
and  since  in  the  lives  of  wonder-workers 
ancient  and  modern,  in  whom  the  power 

1  "  Upon  the  conception  of  the  supernatural 
as  the  personal,"  says  Professor  Nash,  "  apolo- 
getics must  found  the  claims  of  Christianity." 
—  Ethics  and  Revelation. 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion  141 

of  mind  over  matter,  however  astonishing 
and  mysterious,  is  recognized  as  belonging 
to  the  natural  order  of  things  no  less  than 
the  unexplored  Antarctic  belongs  to  the 
globe.  But  the  Revelation  which  he  gave 
to  human  thought  as  a  new  thing,  a 
heavenly  vision  unprecedented,  was  in 
the  higher  realm  of  the  moral  and  spiritual 
life.  This  was  the  true  supernatural, 
whose  reality  and  power  are  separable 
from  all  its  environment  of  circumstances, 
and  wholly  independent  thereof.  The 
characteristic  ideals  of  Jesus,  his  profound 
consciousness  of  God,  his  filial  thought 
of  God,  his  saturation  with  the  conviction 
of  his  moral  oneness  with  God,1  his  realiza- 

1  The  words  in  which  Jesus  expresses  this  are 
much  more  extraordinary  and  profoundly  sig- 
nificant than  any  of  those  mighty  works  of  his, 
the  like  of  which  are  recorded  of  the  ancient 
prophets.  Jesus  was  conscious  of  God  as  living 
in  him,  and  of  himself  as  living  in  God,  in  the 


142  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

tion  of  brotherhood  with  the  meanest 
human  being,  still  transcend  the  common 
level  of  natural  humanity  even  among  his 
disciples.  As  thus  transcendent  they  are 
supernatural  still.  Till  reached  and  real- 
ized, they  manifest  the  fact  of  a  super- 
natural Revelation  in  that  peerless  life 
as  plainly  as  the  sun  is  manifest  in  the 
splendor  of  a  cloudless  day. 

In  the  coming  but  distant  age,  when 
man's  spiritual  nature,  now  so  embryonic, 
shall  have  become  adult,  it  will  doubtless 
so  pervade  and  rule  the  physical  and  psy- 
chical natures  which  it  inhabits  that  the 
distinction  between  natural  and  super- 
unity  of  the  one  eternal  life.  Not  merely  as  a 
man  of  God,  but  as  a  man  in  God,  as  no  other 
man  has  consciously  been,  does  Jesus  utter 
such  sayings  as,  "  I  am  the  light  of  the  world," 
"  I  and  my  Father  are  one."  (See  "  Jesus  the 
Ideal  Man,"  by  the  present  writer.  The  New 
World,  June,  1897.) 


Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion  143 

natural,  so  important  in  the  period  of  its 
development,  will  become  foreign  alike  to 
thought  and  speech.  But  until  the  mak- 
ing of  man  in  the  image  of  God  is  com- 
plete, when  the  spiritual  element  in  our 
composite  being,  now  struggling  for  devel- 
opment, shall  be  manifest  in  its  ultimate 
maturity  and  ascendency  as  the  distinc- 
tive and  proper  nature  of  humanity,  it  is 
of  supreme  importance  for  the  Christian 
teacher,  who  would  point  and  urge  to  the 
heights  of  being,  to  free  men's  minds  of 
error  as  to  what  the  real  supernatural  is. 
Not  the  fancied  disturber  of  the  world's  or- 
dered harmonies,  but  that  highest  Nature 
which  is  the  moulder,  the  glory,  and  the 
crown  of  all  the  lower. 

Imaged  to  us  in  the  human  perf  ectness  of 
Jesus,  the  ideal  Son  of  man,  it  is  revealed 
as  the  distinctive  inheritance  and  prize  of 
the  humanity  that  essays  to  think  the 
thoughts  and  walk  the  ways  of  God.  To 


144  Miracles  and  Supernatural  Religion 

each  of  us  is  it  given  in  germ  *by  our 
human  birth,  to  be  fostered  and  nourished 
in  converse  with  the  Infinite  Presence 
that  inhabits  all  things,  till  its  divine  possi- 
bilities appear  in  the  ultimate  "  revealing 
of  the  sons  of  God,"  *  full  grown  "  accord- 
ing to  the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the 
fulness  of  Christ."  2 

1  Romans  viii.  19.         2Ephesians  iv.   13. 

* 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


The  Life  of  Paul 

Prof.  RUSH  RHEES,  President  of  the  University  of  Rochester. 

Professor  Rhees  is  well  known  from  his  series  of  "  Inductive  Lessons  "  contributed 
to  the  Sunday  School  Times.  His  "  Outline  of  the  Life  of  Paul,"  privately 
printed,  has  had  a  flattering  reception  from  New  Testament  scholars. 

The  History  of  the  Apostolic  Age 

Dr.  C.  W.  VOTAW,  Instructor  in  New  Testament  Literature,  The 
University  of  Chicago. 

Of  Dr.  Votaw's  "  Inductive  Study  of  the  Founding  of  the  Christian  Church,"  Modern 
Churchy  Edinburgh,  says:  "  No  fuller  analysis  of  the  later  books  of  the  New 
Testament  could  be  desired,  and  no  better  programme  could  be  offered  for  their 
study,  than  that  afforded  in  the  scheme  of  fifty  lessons  on  the  Founding  of  the 
Christian  Church^  by  Clyde  W.  Votaw.  It  is  well  adapted  alike  for  practical 
and  more  scholarly  students  of  the  Bible." 

The  Teaching  of  Jesus 

Prof.  GEORGE  B.  STEVENS,  Professor  of  Systematic  Theology,  Yale 
University.  \Now  ready. 

Professor  Stevens's  volumes  upon  "  The  Johannine  Theology,"  "  The  Pauline  The- 
ology," as  well  as  his  recent  volume  on  "  The  Theology  of  the  New  Testament," 
have  made  him  probably  the  most  prominent  writer  on  biblical  theology  iu 
America.  His  new  volume  will  be  among  the  most  important  of  his  works. 

The  Biblical  Theology  of  the  New  Testament 

Prof.  E.  P.  GOULD,  Professor  of  New  Testament  Interpretation,  Prot- 
estant Episcopal  Divinity  School,  Philadelphia.  [Now  ready. 

Professor  Gould's  Commentaries  on  the  Gospel  of  Mark  (in  the  International  Criti- 
cal Commentary}  and  the  Epistles  to  the  Corinthians  (in  the  American  Com- 
mentary') are  critical  and  exegetical  attempts  to  supply  those  elements  which 
are  lacking  in  existing  works  of  the  same  general  aim  and  scope. 

The  History  of  Christian  Literature  until  Eusebius 

Prof.  J.  W.  PLATNER,   Professor  of  Early  Church  History,  Harvard 

University. 

Professor  Platner's  work  will  not  only  treat  the  writings  of  the  early  Christian 
writers,  but  will  also  treat  of  the  history  of  the  New  Testament  Canon. 

OTHERS  TO   FOLLOW 

•'  An  excellent  series  of  scholarly,  yet  concise  and  inexpensive  New  Testament  hand- 
books."— Christian  Advocate,  New  York. 

•*  These  books  are  remarkably  well  suited  in  language,  style,  and  price,  to  all 
students  of  the  New  Testament."  —  The  Congregationalist,  Boston, 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

66  FIFTH  AVENUE,   HEW  YORK 


New  Testament   Handbooks 


EDITED  BY 

SHAILER  MATHEWS 

Professor  of  New  Testament  History  and  Interpretation^ 
University  of  Chicago 

Arrangements  are  made  for  the  following  volumes,  and  the  publishers 
will,  on  request,  send  notice  of  the  issue  of  each  volume  as  it  appears  and 
each  descriptive  circular  sent  out  later;  such  requests  for  information 
should  state  whether  address  is  permanent  or  not :  — 

The  History  of  the  Textual  Criticism  of  the 
New  Testament 

Prof.  MARVIN  R.  VINCENT,  Professor  of  New  Testament  Exegesis, 
Union  Theological  Seminary.  \_Now  ready* 

Professor  Vincent's  contributions  to  the  study  of  the  New  Testament  rank  him 
among  the  first  American  exegetes.  His  most  recent  publication  is  "  A  Critical 
and  Exegetical  Commentary  on  the  Epistles  to  the  Philippians  and  to  Philemon  " 
(International  Critical  Commentary},  which  was  preceded  by  a  "  Students' 
New  Testament  Handbook,"  "  Word  Studies  in  the  New  Testament,"  and 
others. 

The  History  of  the  Higher  Criticism  of  the 
New  Testament 

Prof.  HENRY  S.  NASH,  Professor  of  New  Testament  Interpretation, 
Cambridge  Divinity  School.  \_Now  ready. 

Of  Professor  Nash's  "  Genesis  of  the  Social  Conscience,"  The  Outlook  said:  "  The 
results  of  Professor  Nash's  ripe  thought  are  presented  in  a  luminous,  compact, 
and  often  epigrammatic  style.  The  treatment  is  at  once  masterful  and  helpful, 
and  the  book  ought  to  be  a  quickening  influence  of  the  highest  kind;  it  surely 
will  establish  the  fame  of  its  author  as  a  profound  thinker,  one  from  whom  we 
have  a  right  to  expect  future  inspiration  of  a  kindred  sort." 

Introduction  to  the  Books  of  the  New  Testament 

Prof.  B.  WISNER  BACON,  Professor  of  New  Testament  Interpretation, 
Yale  University.  [Now  ready. 

Professor  Bacon's  works  in  the  field  of  Old  Testament  criticism  include  "  The 
Triple  Tradition  of  Exodus,"  and  "  The  Genesis  of  Genesis,"  a  study  of  the 
documentary  sources  of  the  books  of  Moses.  In  the  field  of  New  Testament 
study  he  has  published  a  number  of  brilliant  papers,  the  most  recent  of  which  is 
"  The  Autobiography  of  Jesus,"  in  the  American  Journal  of  Theology. 

The  History  of  New  Testament  Times  in  Palestine 

Prof.  SHAILER  MATHEWS,  Professor  of  New  Testament  History  and 
Interpretation,  The  University  of  Chicago.  \_Now  ready. 

The  Congregationalist  says  of  Prof.  Shaiier  Mathews's  recent  work,  "  The  Social 
Teaching  of  Jesus"  :  "Re-reading  deepens  the  impression  that  the  author  is 
scholarly,  devout,  awake  to  all  modern  thought,  and  yet  conservative  and  pre- 
eminently sane.  If,  after  reading  the  chapters  dealing  with  Jesus'  attitude 
toward  man,  society,  the  family,  the  state,  and  wealth,  the  reader  will  not  asfce 
with  us  in  this  opinion,  we  greatly  err  as  prophets." 


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